The weather was not as nice as it was yesterday but we had decided to visit the Botanical Gardens before we leave Sarasota this coming Sunday.The gardens were started by a very rich oil man in the 1930's a Mr William Selby and his wife Marie who had previously lived up the mid west of America before deciding that the sun and warmth of Sarasota was for them. Sarasota is not so far south so as to suffer from the increased number of mosquito's that abound further South, where it is mainly alligator country with many stagnant pools.
The garden is about 7 acres in size and during the many years the house was owned by the Selby family they arranged and purchased plant species from abroad and particularly those that were previously unknown in the USA. There is a huge selection of different plants from Bonsai trees to Banyan trees and a really amazing Fig tree where the roots stay on the surface to provide extra strength to hold up the tree. The garden frontage is situated on the Sarasota bay and to one side there is a small creek with some rather old and Colonial type houses plus some more modern ones. There is a lot of money in this town and it shows when you tour some of the smaller side roads with the houses having direct water frontage. The gardens have a very nice water garden filled with some amazing Koi fish with skin colours that I have not seen before, boy was I jealous.
There were many locations where you could just sit and listen to the birds and we also watched a pair of Ospreys flying around perhaps building a nest and also a pelican and heron fishing in the bay. It was an enjoyable visit although for $ 17.00 per adult it was not cheap when you consider that the Ringling gardens are free to visit. However the Botanical gardens do a lot of conservation and research which does not come cheap.
In the afternoon we caught up with some emails and arranged hotels in Pensacola, Florida and also New Orleans, Louisiana as they are on our route to Austin, Texas. We also have to make one more hotel reservation between New Orleans and Austin but nothing has been decided yet.
After collecting a prescription from the chemist we headed home and for dinner this evening Jennifer prepared stir fried pork with onions and red peppers with sliced cabbage on a bed of white rice. Absolutely delicious! Noel transferred the photos from today's visit and got them ready for upload to our Phanfare web site but there is a delay as the amount of time we spend at internet cafes does not allow sufficient time for the photos to be uploaded on a slow wifi connection. Once we get to the Hotel this Sunday night and with a direct internet connection we hope to update the photo web site then.
I hope Mr Twitty Blair got a hard time at the Iraq Enquiry today but I will have to wait till get home to see it, providing it is still on the web.
Tomorrow we start packing up as we leave here early Sunday morning for a six hour drive to Tallahasse.
