Farewell Florida

Here's just a little more from the Sunshine State, to keep me going until the autumn.

Forgive me while I puzzle over whether this was sunrise or sunset but it was pretty anyway!
Meanwhile, hanging a bunch of bananas in your garage is not unusual in Florida. These belong to our neighbour. If the weather turns cold while they're ripening on the tree,  they need some tlc.

And very tasty they were too.  Floridians are very generous with their produce. People often want fruit trees and then miscalculate, ("Help, can't someone take all these oranges/lemons/avodados off my hands?") We are always willing to oblige. Our only fruit tree is a calamandon, with small, bitter fruit that makes great jam, if jam-making were my scene. I prefer something you can just pick off a tree and eat.
   Meanwhile this is someone else's bougainvillea.

 More lavish than our puny one. It's the sign of  a true Floridian to recognise that these shrubs, which, to outsiders, epitomise living in a romantic, sub-tropical paradise, are actually the bane of gardeners, full of wicked hidden thorns. There's a moral there somewhere. Likewise the Spanish moss, which drapes over live oak trees, beautiful from afar,

 is ugly-looking close-to and full of nefarious pests. Don't even think of bringing any home.

Here's another imaginative mail box. It makes a change from dolphins and sea shells.

A rare sight here, Mr Proudly Deplorable would find many more kindred spirits in western New York.  (Not to mention West Virginia, though I fear the recent stay of execution may be too late for the poor coal towns.)

A world away.

I expect it will be a while before I see another palm tree.

 But in the meantime there's the burgeoning northern spring and summer to look forward to.