From Northern Hardwood Forest to Mangroves in KW

In our homeland forest in Northern New Hampshire, I would be talking about Maple, Oak, Beech, Ash and Birch as some of the most popular and abundant of hardwoods. In Florida, I would be talking about, blank, blank, blank! I have no clue on their names, but I do know that I have seen some mighty awesome looking trees here in the Keys. I’ve got to educate myself and hopefully pass some of what I have discovered, here on my blog. What I know now is… Take pictures of some of these magnificent trees. A couple of them have plaques with descriptions. I will get back to this subject further down on this blog and possibly in future blogs.
Yesterday afternoon, we were at the soup kitchen for our second volunteer serving on the food line. It is amazing how they/we feed 100 people in twenty minutes or so. It reminds me a lot of my old Army days! At the end of the serving line, a 37 year old said he needed to go to the hospital. He said he had a hard time breathing, has high blood pressure and hadn’t taken his BP medication for a month. He said he was sorry and started to cry. There was some discussion about bringing him to the hospital. I had my pickup truck there, but I was very hesitant about bringing someone to the hospital. I kept thinking, what if he’s on drugs, what if he has a seizure, and a lot more what if’s. The correct answer was to call 911. Soon the ambulance and a police officer were on the scene. We stuck around to watch what would happen to the patient. They checked him out, did all of their on site evaluations and than allowed him to board into the ambulance. I guess we did the proper thing in calling 911. Many of the homeless people have a multitude of problems. They are all in need of assistance in one form or another and most are very grateful for what they get from the Soup Kitchen. Another unexpected outcome from volunteering at the Soup Kitchen was the age of the needy. I surely expected middle age men, down and out, but to see young men with haircut short enough to meet military standards, some wearing camouflage bush hats and backpacks. I wonder if they have a military history, PTSD or whatever. The one thing I do know is that they are in need of help! Men are not the only gender in the line. Women, young and old, some look like they could be our retired neighbors at the campground in Trumbo Point.
Sunday night it rained just enough to screw up the Bocce courts for our Monday morning round of Bocce down on White Street. It wasn’t cool this morning, but the clouds were occasionally very dark. Should we bike or not? The forecast, 20% chance of a shower… After a couple of false starts, a little drizzle, we stayed put and read our books close to home. Monday evening the skies cleared and I grabbed onto my Nikon. We took a three mile walk around the water front. I did get a couple of good night shots.
The weather up north is terrible, I’m told. The weather isn’t as nice as it was this time last year, but we’re thankful that we are here.

One Tree...One Person

The last couple of days we have been riding the bikes, crisscrossing the main arteries of KW and getting into more side and back streets. I’m amazed at the number of City of KW workers that are out and about beautifying the city. Most residents also pitch in and keep the maintenance on their properties updated. Every now and then, I stop and click a landscape front entry to someone’s home. Also on our quest are those amazing trees that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. This Saturday, there is an open house at the Botanical Gardens, they, I’m told, have a couple of National Champion trees.
Sunday, Feb 15, 2015

Air Force checking in for the night at
our campground!

The Key West Tropical Forest and Gardens had an open house this past weekend. Many artist and vendors were present to sell their crafts and goods. The main reason for our interest was the fact that the Tropical Forest  has five National Champion trees and Challengers (runner ups). You would think they would have had a plaque or marker to help easily identify them from the many others clustered together. No dice! I just have the names, but no pictures. Cinnamon Bark, Milkbark, Wild Dilly, Locustberry, Pigeon Plum and finally Saffron Plum. I did get pictures of the Nation Champions down on Truman Ave by the Basilica. Key West definitely has some remarkable massive trees. The summer hurricane season does reduce their numbers, but they are still surviving here in the tropics.

Nearly looks hand painted!

Amazing flowers in the Tropics!

One of the most interesting vendors at the Gardens was the KW Botanical Garden Society Tours to of all places “Cuba”! I often talk about visiting Cuba and we both brought our Passports just in case. There are several different tours on different dates. The next one is called the Western Loop scheduled for March 17 to 24th, 2015. The Vinales is a red-earth pasture area known for Tobacco growing. The breathtaking National Park, “Vinales” is also a highlight I’m told. May 14-18, 2015 will be Havana Only tour. That’s the one I would be interested in. The May schedule is past our must leave KW campsite, so most likely that won’t happen either.

Night, Night until morning!

That is what we saw and did!

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Our First Month…Snow to Sun!!

Yes, this week will mark our one month departure from zero degree weather to more favorable temperature down in the Keys of Florida. I can’t believe how fast the month has flown by! Our schedule seems to be busier than ever. That’s a good thing. I’m trying to get back on my routine of biking around the ten mile perimeter of Key West every other day.

Sunset on our evening bike ride

This morning, we did our ten miles and tonight we went to town on the bikes again, this time to buy batteries for my bike’s head and tail lights. It is incredibly wonderful to bike in the evening. We find many new little streets to explore. We are doing this relatively early evening, just after sun down. The breeze is light and the temperature is near perfect for the ride. Key West is a unique town with many small blocks of residential housing. Many of the streets are nearly passable by only one car at a time. This is where we enjoy riding and seeing what the different residences have for landscaping. All have trees of different species, that I would never be able to identify.

Another stop for an evening photo

The real-estate is tight, as there isn’t enough for all of the people on the island. This naturally brings the cost up to unbelievable amounts. This exploration is what we enjoy immensely in riding our bikes on the byways of Key West. 
Another thing we enjoy is finding nighttime locations to photograph. Key West is well lit and many of the mansions have landscape lighting that accentuates the mansions and especially the landscaping. I experiment with different camera settings to try and get the image I'm looking for. My Nikon D-7000 is capable of taking photos in nearly total darkness. I can make

Many of the street are perfect for an evening stroll

a totally dark scene turnout just about into broad daylight. So the trick is to try and reproduce the scene as my eye sees it, dark, with evening lighting accenting the mansions and landscape.
Now, a recent comment on Facebook about the lack of trees here at the Coast Guard RV campground has me thinking of all of the majestic trees we’ve seen here in Key West. I’m going to have a new tree photo each week on Facebook. Some of these trees are Nationally recognized. We’ve seen giant red wood trees that are 15 feet across at the base, but there are trees here that are 30 feet across. The difference is that the trees in California are hundred or so high, where here they are maybe seventy-five high.

Truman Annex next to the Truman White House

The first week of February was marked by steady wind and a few rain showers. This interfered with our Bocce schedule. You can’t play Bocce if the sand is damp. The sand sticks to the balls and it just doesn’t work! That meant that we tried something different. We volunteered at St Mary Star of the Sea soup kitchen. Yup, my first job was to make peanut butter/jelly sandwiches. I used 12 sandwich breads and one large bowl of peanut butter and plenty of jelly. The sandwiches are not part of the one four o’clock meal they serve. The sandwiches are for the next day’s breakfast. We actually worked from 11am to 12:30pm.

Our neighbors Jerry & Maxine are leaving
Key West for their home in Georgia

We left and did some shopping for our selves after that. We volunteered to come back at 3:30pm to help serve the four o’clock meal. I sort of had a pre-conceived notion that they were all homeless, drunks or on drugs, but this was not the case. A lot of people just run out of money each month. Nearly all were so thankful for the meal. We are going back later this afternoon to help serve another 4pm meal. Ninety three meals were served to these people in need.

And finally a photo of the full moon taken a few nights ago from our campsite at Trumbo point

I am ending this blog for today Sunday Feb. 8, 2015

That is what we did and saw!

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