Not your Ordinary Sand Castles!

This year Sarasota celebrated it's first annual Siesta Key Crystal Classic - Master Sand Sculpting Competition.  Twenty three master sand sculptors from around the US were invited to compete at Siesta Key on some of the most amazingly beautiful sand in the world.  Siesta Key is renowned for it's pure white sand and has won competitions for the best sand. At the "Great International White Sand Beach Challenge" held in 1987, it was recognized as having the "whitest and finest sand in the world. "Why you ask?  "Unlike beaches elsewhere that are made up mostly of coral, Siesta Beach's sand is 99% quartz. Even on the hottest days, the sand is so reflective that it feels cool underfoot. It's estimated that the sand on Siesta Beach and Crescent Beach on Siesta Key is millions of years old, and started in the Appalachians and flowed down the rivers and was eventually deposited on the shores of Siesta Key."

So, what better place to have a sand sculpting competition?  Here are some before and then after shots of some of the sculptures which took four days to complete.

Going Wild in the Streets of Sarasota with Chalk

Sarasota has so many things going on all the time but this past Halloween weekend was the first annual Sarasota Chalk Festival featuring artists from around the world.  Enjoy the show: *click on each image to enlarge it

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.