Sanibel Island Redux

Wo. Its almost been 10 days since my last post. I know I know - shame on me. I had all these good intentions on hopping on and posting the other half of the Sanibel photos right after I got home - but playing catch-up from all that wonderful relaxing has taken a while. Now I have new and neglected projects surfacing all over the place and all I hear is the clock doing a double-time tick-tick-tick.

I have a short video of an oddly cool ocean critter that washed up on shore that I will post later. (I can already hear Laura, Joy and AM's "Ewwww! s") Him/Her/It doesn't fit into the category of any jelly fish that I could find - nor sea cucumbers either. So if anyone has even a remote guess - please let me know! For now here's a still shot of Orange gelatinous sea creature of Sanibel Island:


Everything - even storms - are beautiful at the beach, the sand even gets caught in that eerie blue/gray hue and you can see the rain add water to the salty sea.


We did drive into Ft. Myer's to see Edison's Winter residence and lab. I learned that we have Edison's rubber production experiments during WWII to thank for the 2nd largest Banyan (Ficus benghalensis) tree in the world. Planted in 1925 from a 4 foot cutting it now covers about 400 feet! I SO want to grow one of these!


Edison's lab - everything is pretty much in its original state with all the cool equipment, beakers and chemicals jars still out on the tables.


There was also a small museum attached to the grounds/gardens/lab. They had these fantastic light bulbs that had been manufactured specifically for the anniversary of the light bulb. Hmmm... I wonder if I could get one of these helmet mounted?


Coconuts, some building materials, a few plastic items (that I picked up to throw away) driftwood and this broken crab trap were among some of the items to wash up on shore. This crab trap was literally teeming with life. There were little red-clawed shrimp, tiny crabs, brightly colored sponges. Paul and I manged to rescue the visible shrimp and tiny crabs before the trap was picked over by the seagulls.


As I said before a lot of things washed up on shore....


My Mom helped us sort through handfuls of shells for the pretties - like the nice one (center) in the very first picture. She's so cute.


This is by far one of the most interesting shots I took. I took about 7 of these - right on the ground - with various ranges of focus - some more on the shells, some more on Paul. I really like this one because its right in between. Its like you've just looked up and are beginning to focus on the figure walking down the beach. And the sky's subtle rainbow as day turns into night really makes it moody.


Sanibel already feels like a distant dream.