F Cubed (Florida Folk Festival)

What weekend is complete without music, dance, food, and tattoos? Not mine!

My friend Ruth and I journeyed to the Florida Folk Festival in White Springs over Memorial Day weekend for all those delights. Below is some documentation to support my claims.


This colorful sign greeted us upon entry to the festival.


Ben Prestage knocked my socks off. He was playing a box guitar made out of broom handles held together "with a radiator hose clamp," he informed the crowd. His sound is bluesy and raucous, fun and affable. Sadly, his CDs were sold out by the time I "discovered" him at the festival. Learn more at www.benprestage.net


No folk festival worth its salt would skimp out on dancing. Here, novices and experts do a little Cajun two-step.


Various churches around the area of White Springs collared up the greens, fried chicken, squash, sweet tea, fried okra, cornbread, pecan pie, bbq ribs and other goodies to fill our tummies. Can you say Southern comfort food?


Ahh. The henna tattoo. Perfect for those with commitment issues. Goes on painlessly, disappears in less than 2 weeks.

Creatures on the Farm

Here is a sampling of some of the animals, plants, and insects I see here in Fort McCoy, Fla.


A fluffy-legged rooster loiters near the wire fence.


Various fowl include ducks, geese, and chickens.


Baby turkeys hungrily wait for breakfast.


Fat-bottomed geese drink from the refreshing green pond.


Horses Stormy, Star, and Noel live in the barn at night and in the paddock in the day.


Various flowers embellish the garden.


Is their bark worse than their bite? I don't want to find out.


A drowned dragonfly rests in peace in the above-ground pool.


"Bub" is the patriarch of the family.

Watersports in Gator Country

With 3 alligator attacks in Florida in the past few weeks, you'd think sensible people would avoid freshwater lakes and rivers. I have not been sensible this week!



I've been staying in Fort McCoy, Fla., for the past week, visiting high school friends Lisa and Dan and their 3 little boys. They have a boat that they take on the various lakes in this central Florida locale. I trusted fishing-and-boating-enthusiast Dan's judgment on our chances of getting eaten by alligators, which he said were pretty slim. (And slim just took the last bus out of town.) And since I am alive to type this blog, I guess my trust was not misplaced.



I tried my hand (and legs) at waterskiing and tubing in Lake Kerr. I'm much better at the latter (because all you do is sit on a tube while the boat drags you along!). This was only my second attempt at water skiing, and as the photo shows, I still don't know how to do it. We kept the boat in the middle of the lake, far from the grasses and trees alligators tend to frequent.



We also took a sunset cruise of the Silver River, which leads into Silver Springs. This tourist attraction is in Ocala proper, and used to be the home of flamboyant water ski shows and ... monkeys. We didn't see any monkeys, but I'm told they live in the trees surrounding the river and spring. I did see an alligator sunning itself on a log, egrets, herons, loads of fish, and many many bugs. (The photo of me hiding in my gray sweatshirt shows how I tried to avoid them.) We deftly avoided the 3 or 4 alligators we saw floating like dark logs near the banks of the river.



The payoff for the hour-long foray thru the alligator- and insect-ridden river was the clear blue waters of Silver Springs, through which we saw fish such as garr and "cleaners," which basically act as vacuum cleaners. We glimpsed the bottom of the spring, from which fresh water bubbles up from the Earth. Hence, Silver "Springs." Another visual treat were the hundreds of birds roosting in the trees as the sun set. They nervously flew about as our boat's motor came into earshot, but settled down again to "pose" for some photos.



My time in this part of the state has definitely fed the nature-loving part of my soul!

brushfires a -burnin'

The flashing sign on I-95 north of Cocoa, Fla., did not sway me from the interstate. After all, the supposed traffic information channel, 1600 AM, was happily playing Latino music. Local FM stations were not interrupting Sheryl Crow to tell me about any possible closures ahead. And, the capper: The blond clerk in the automotive travel department at the Melbourne branch of AAA told me earlier in the day that, no, there are no closures on I-95 today, would you like a bag for your travel books? A bag? No. A firehose? Possibly.


About 1/4 mile south of the Edgewater exit, it became clear that the billowing orange cloud I had been seeing for the past hour was not a thunderstorm but yes, indeed, a brush fire raging just to the west of I-95 in Edgewater.

I shot these pictures from my car as I waited to exit the highway using a Canon digital camera. The shot of the trailer is from Federal Highway, to which we northbound drivers were detoured. The wind was blowing east toward the ocean.

Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Today I woke up and officially had no place to live; rather, no place to live that I owned. The final walk-thru was yesterday. But the bed at my sister's place here in PSL was comfy, and I had my cat with me, so all was right with the world.

All my personal belongings are scattered throughout my sister's house and in my car. I no longer own a bed, a couch, a kitchen table, a desk, or a bureau. I look around my sister's house and see silk plants, end tables, throw pillows, and corner shelves I've given up. It is eerie in a way; it's like inheriting goods from a relative who's now gone "beyond."

I plan on hitting Melbourne and the Ocala area in the next few days before coming back to PSL to work on some projects and housesit for my sister.

Side note: I just noticed the mousepad at my sister's place; it's obviously one she used at work. It's plain blue with her name written with a black pen. Under her name, she has written, "If found please turn into Security." Why bother?

packing

One wall of my living room now looks like this. To be accurate, this is no longer my living room. I closed on the condo yesterday. I'm staying thru the week, then I am off to grub off family and friends for a while! Looking forward to seeing everyone... on the road.

dp