Thursday, October 14, 2010

Red Bug Slough



I took a long bicycle ride today through Red Bug Slough which is a 72 acre preserve and remnant piece of natural Florida nestled in the midst of suburban Sarasota.  Imagine this beautiful preserve in the middle of Sarasota!  There is a ton of wildlife from all kinds of birds including osprey and bald eagles, to otters, alligators, limpkins, anhinga, turtles etc.
Here are some photos from today's bike ride:





Huge old oak trees
Anhinga drying his wings off
see if you can see the baby turtle in the photo
it's a red bug but not what the slough is named for
can you see the baby to the back of the mommy turtle?

can you believe someone lives here?
Spanish moss

Butterflies and stuff



So last weekend was the big Master Gardeners Plant Sale which just happened to take place around the corner from my house.  It was just too easy!  I made two trips and loaded up on plants that attract butterflies so I could plant my butterfly garden.


The area needed to be cleaned out first since there used to be a few ficus trees that died from the cold weather last winter and there were a ton of weeds to pull.  I cut the dead ficus down and pulled the weeds, moved the iron table and chairs and the pea gravel so I was just down to dirt.  Finally, it was time to plant.

The variety of plants should give me lots of butterflies of various and assorted colors and species.  Some plants are meant to attract the butterflies for the nectar and some are for them to actually eat while they are growing.  I will post progress photos from time to time to let you see how things are progressing.  This weekend is the rain barrel workshop so I suppose the next post will be all about rain barrels and collecting rain water for watering the yard.