Animals / Flowers

We have been into that little old house. It somehow belongs to my brother-in-law but it's half broken and after some attempt to fix it and live there it now is no longer in use. There's some stuff. Nothing special. Otherwise it wouldn't sit there. We wanted to look at a dog crate to sell it on craigslist. The crate was inhabited.

 Another crazy animal was spotted on the wall before we went inside. Walking stick. Talking stick. Ok, just the first..

And a walk through the garden offered some hidden beauties. Some tiny little flowers - yellow, purple and pink ones - hide between the grass this weeks. Lovely. Some more flowers let us hope for yummy vegetables soon. By the way: one little Dill plant survived.

Tampa /St. Pete

We drove to St. Petersburg today to have a look at a car. Unfortunately the car was crap.

Driving on one of those big bridges that cross the bay between Tampa and St.Pete is awesome. For some while you drive really close to the water, no high wall that cuts the view to the sides. We saw dolphins and lots of pelicans, too. My first impression of Tampa Downtown:

And today was sooo hot!

Armadillo

Yet we saw them sometimes dead on the street. And one sceleton in the woods. But we didn't have the pleasure to see a living Armadillo so far.

Until today we had a very direct encounter with this little cute and funny creature.

The armadillo looked like a little pig and pig-like it nuzzled it's snout through the ground. It wasn't running away from us. It didn't even mind when we went as close as about one meter. I guess Sisto reached with his hand about 10 cm upon it. Well then it got startled, made a little jump and ran away.

 

Oh how lucky we are!

Big bugs or About the house of our dreams

Today I could write about really big bugs. They are called palmetto bugs and one was found in the same bed we are sleeping in now. Luckily that was before we slept in there and when someone else had to deal with the creature. But today I could meet and greet one of this kind and show it to you:

Today I could either write about big bugs and colorful spiders (possibly a black widow, I'm not sure) or show you pictures of a house we visited. My family-in-law is looking for a house. It shall be bigger and closer in town than the one we're living in currently. So we went to that house (we saw before) and which Sisto an me enjoyed from the first moment on. We over all liked the garden and entry setting.

Little hedges and broken concrete mixed with red and yellow stone patterns. A nice backyard with lots of potential. Wild growth right now. Some stone paths and a back door into the kitchen.

 But here's the entry. Into kind of a Florida room. Then you enter the living room. It was big and one side had just windows which I like a lot. The house we're living in right know doesn't have lots of windows. It's made to keep the heat out and therefore is very dark inside. But I enjoy lots of windows and big windows, so the light can reach every little spot in a room. I don't feel well if it's dark inside all the time.

Florida room /entry

living room

Then you've got the kitchen. It wasn't big but had enough space for everything and a big window in the middle. The color is neat, too, isn't it?

 In the backyard they had a tiny little house. "The office". Well, it was more like a little workshop (including a toilet and a basin). Or an outside bathroom. But still. A nice little house.
I didn't make pictures of the bedrooms. They had bent walls. The family didn't like that. But we think it's charming. This house definitely had lots of character and we felt that it had been home to a happy family. It would be the perfect home for us. But since we don't wanna stay in Inverness at all this   was just another dream of how we'd love to live. With a swing hanging in an old, big tree.

Homosassa Springs and klean kanteen

Today we went to the wildlife park in Homosassa Springs. We got to see Manatees. They are so huge, I really can't believe it! They were fed with salad. 

I'm not quite sure what to think about those kind of parks. I love to see animals so close. And this park really just had animals native to Florida. The money earned there probably helps to safe wildlife and they also have the goal to protect endangered species like manatees. And they try to wake peoples interest in wildlife, in animal protection and environmentalism. 

But at the same time there are lots of animals that are kept in captivity. And I don't think a lot of the people visiting the park think about mentioned above aspects. They wouldn't put together that helping those animals is also done by reducing the amount of plastics in your everyday life (like the bunch of bags they wrap around every item you buy in every shop around here). That you can't safe the manatees with a 1 mpg car (to exaggerate a bit). And probably most of them don't give a shit about that at all. That makes me sad.

Well. Back to something else. Cause when we came back from the trip there was a big box waiting in front of the door. And inside I found my long awaited klean kanteen bottles. I read about them on birdies blog a while ago and since then wanted to purchase them. But then we knew we would move and I didn't wanted to buy anything. So I had to wait until we were here. But now I actually did it, I ordered two of those awesome bottles! No more drinking from plastic bottles. Why that? Ok, it's written in german, but here's the amazing summary of health dangers caused by plastic.

And now we go and have some ice cream in the sun. That's Florida best...

Finally!

I was starting to doubt that there were wild ones around... but today I saw my first alligator! Hurray!!

Angekommen.

Nach einer langen und anstrengenden Fahrt, nach vielen, vielen ungeduldigen Tagen und Stunden, nach nervenaufreibender Langeweile und tagelanger Mangelernährung haben wir es geschafft.
Wir sind endlich in Florida angekommen!

Ich bin grade total müde und auch leicht überfordert mit den ganzen auf mich einprasselnden Eindrücken. So viele Dinge sind in den letzten Monaten passiert, da ist es jetzt erstmal kaum zu glauben, dass man sich auch mal ein paar Tage Zeit nehmen kann, das Leben hier in Angriff zu nehmen.

Eigentlich dachte ich, sobald ich hier wieder schreiben kann, kann ich ein Bilderbuch meiner Eindrücke und Erlebnisse hier aufmachen. Aber kennt ihr das, wenn soviel auf einmal passiert, dass man gar nicht weiß, wo man anfangen soll mit dem Erzählen? Wenn soviel los ist, dass man, obwohl es soviel zu berichten gäbe, nicht weiss, was man erzählen soll?
So ein bisschen geht's mir grade.

Well, I found me walking down an english street. We had a horrible day, when entering the United States because my immigration package was too complicated for the port police officers. We had some days of winter again on the open sea. And then suddenly came into the hottest summer in less than a week when we went more south. We saw dolphins. And flying fish. We arrived after a horrible 12 hour trip through hot and humid southern USA. I saw a lot of beautiful houses and rusty cars. We didn't sleep for 24 hours. We got tasty grapes and lots of orange juice. And now we stay with my husbands family in a small city in the middle of Florida. Lots of squirrels. Lots of blue jays. And some cardinals, too. I have to get familiar that there could be snakes in the yard. And I have to learn a lot of things. But right now, I just have to relax for a while and just enjoy that it's summer around here!

That's it. For today...

Im Mai.

 Echtes Leben. Eine Schiffahrt. Bye bye bis Juni.

Fish on Friday

A fish I found more than one year ago on a dutch beach. There were some more dead ones of these needle fishes and looked incredibly beautiful. I like dead animals. In the nature. I don't like them as salami or like the scampi in that stupid cafe lying next to the soup.. And especially today everybody should ask himself if it's really necessary to go on eating fish when the oceans, this biggest of all and yet nearly unknown ecosystem, is close to collapsing by human interferences. Well, you know about methods like trawling, and you know that mangrove forests are destructed to built shrimp farms, and apart from that eating fish means eating all those chemicals and dangerous poisons people all over the world discharge into the oceans. So here's what I think about it: Next time in the supermarket you just think about these facts for 10 seconds when you stand in front of the board with all those pressed-into-bars-animals.

You still want to see the not yet rotten image from my collection of dead animals?

Here it is for you:

Vogel am Fenster

"POCK"

machte es gestern morgen so um zwanzig nach sieben. Und mit lautem Knall war ein Vogel gegen unser Fenster geflogen und wir wach. Dieser Abdruck zeugt vom unorthodoxen Versuch sich Einlass zu verschaffen. Oder auch nur von der schmerzhaften Begegnung eines nicht so kleinen Vogels mit dem Material Glas. Das tut weh.

Man kann zum Teil sogar die sehr feinen Strukturen der Federn im Abdruck erkennen. Dass der Vogel nicht comic-haft an der Scheibe entlang nach unten gerutscht und dann auf dem Rücken landend zur Erde geplumst ist, ist ein Wunder. Oder vielleicht ist er das auch?

Wir hoffen, er hat von diesem Zwischenfall nur einen leichten Schock und keine ernsthaften Verletzungen davon getragen. Der Arme!

Schon wieder den Sonntags-Post verpasst

Am Wochenende war frei.

Wir hatten keinerlei Jobs angenommen und ich hatte meine Wochenendschicht auf den Freitag schieben können, sodass das Wochenende nur wir und schöne Dinge war.

Zum Beispiel ins elternlose Elternheim fahren und Wäsche waschen.. (Die nicht Anwesenden waren nämlich über das Wochenende nach Norden gefahren. Sowohl die Richtung als auch der Ort.)

Zum Beispiel einer Biene, die im Treppenhaus gefunden

wurde das Leben retten. Durch Zufall hatte ich kurz vorher den letzten Rest aus dem mit dem letzten Rest schon ewig im Schrank vergessenen Glas gekratzt und am Deckel klebten noch ein paar Restereste. Grade genug, um einer Biene wieder Lebenswille und Kraft zu verschaffen. Erst sass sie nur auf dem Deckel. Und dann nach einer Weile fing sie an zu schlecken. Und nach einer ganzen weiteren Weile fingen die Flügel an zu zucken und sie flog davon.

Den Abend verbrachten wir mit einem Konzert.

Eine kurze Nacht folgte. Denn der Morgen begann mit der Frage, ob wir mit Spazieren kommen wollen. Wollllen wir. Sind in 15 Minuten ausm Bett und im schönen Wetter. Noch vor dem Frühstück.

Das dann im Anschluss und mit Band und Freunden. Schöner Sonntagmorgen.

Nochmal Mutter und Kind besucht.

Und dann wieder ins Elternhaus, nochmal Wäsche und leckere Lasagne, die ich schon eine ganze lange Weile auf meiner "Will ich mal machen"-Liste habe. Da die noch eine Weile im Ofen brauchte gabs für den ersten Hunger den Nachtisch zuerst und Sonne gratis obendrauf. (Hatten wir am Abend vorher von der Band gelernt. Scheint also durchaus legitim zu sein.)

eins:

zwei:

drei:

Eine Runde quatschen mit Hawaii.

Und dann zu Hause nur noch ins Bett gefallen.

So zwei herrliche Tage.

underwater seals make sounds like synthesizers, did you know?

and oh no, some animals sound really weird:


and once started with this youtubing you'll get sucked into a world of weird pets with weird habbits and more than this weird owners..

giant birds

birds can't grow too big and at the same time keep their ability to fly because feathers grow slowly.
the largest flying bird was Argentavis magnificens (E in picture below).

another nice one for you that is really awesome here: