Florida road trip

This past week my wife and I, took a road trip around Florida.  First, stop the Kennedy Space Center in Melbourne FL.  Our second stop was the Merritt Island wildlife refuge near the Space Coast, we ended our trip at the EPCOT flower and garden festival at Disney World.

I am a big fan of space exploration and science fiction; In the forty plus years that I have lived in Florida, this is the first time I visited and tour the space center.  I can’t believe that it took me all this time to visit the Cape.  I loved the space museum, with all the rockets, the history of our space program and the actual space shuttle Atlantis.  My favorite part of the day was the actual tour of the launchpads and the impressive assembling building.  Today some of these buildings and launchpads are lease to private industry (Boeing and Space X) I don’t know if this is good or bad, but when NASA was in total control of our space exploration, we did great things.  I am coming back, hopefully on a launch day.

The visit to the Merritt Island wildlife refuge did not disappoint.  The refuge was teeming with birds, it was great to see so many spoonbills.  A first for me, I spotted a Glossy Ibis.  

 The EPCOT flower and garden festival was started by Disney 25 years ago to bring more visitors to the parks during the spring offseason.  The festival has evolved over the years and today it is as much about the food sold around the park (where the money is) than it is about the flowers.  If you like topiaries, Disney gardeners are masters at it.  I enjoy my yearly visit to the festival, I recognize that is not as grand as it used to be, but it continues to be a beautiful site.

Gardening in a construction site

We have decided to do some renovations to our home, and that will put some stress on the garden.  First, we are adding a new roof to the house.  There was nothing wrong with our old roof, except that it was over twenty years old and nowadays in Florida insurance companies are refusing to insure homes for hurricane coverage unless the roof is new.  As long as we were putting a new roof, we decided to paint the house and put new rain gutters.  I expect damage to my plants especially those near the house, but it can't be helped.    

The first casualty was my giant sticks on fire plant, it dropped to the ground and broke in several pieces.  From one plant I now have three.

Flowers in the garden this week

This is the second time the Angel's trumpet plant has flowers this year.

Springtime and the Plumeria tree is full of flowers

Not very smart of me to put new grass in my back garden in the middle of house renovations.  My three-year-old grandson wanted a place to play when visiting.