May 13th, 2024

Happy Day After Mother's Day!!  

This is how my Mother's Day began.  Sweet cards and my favourite cinnamon roll. Yummmmy! So Wonderfully Bad for me!  I got emails and phone calls and texts and IM's and oh my goodness so many good wishes for a Happy Mama's Day!  

Tim took me (and my camera) to Spanish Point for my Mother's Day Outing.  I know that means little to nothing to you but Spanish point is a wonderful place, just two towns north of us (maybe a 15-20 minute drive).   About a hundred years ago, a phenomenally wealthy woman from Chicago named Bertha Palmer fell so in love with, what is now the Sarasota County area of Florida, that she bought some 14,000 acres of land!  (which is now roughly a quarter of Sarasota County).  She carved out 350 acres along Little Sarasota Bay to build her winter home which she referred to has her winter cottage. So naturally it was a freakin' mansion!  She preserved the existing homesteaders buildings, including a chapel, and repurposed some of them into things like a guest house and homes for her own servants and grounds caretakers.  She also had magnificent gardens created.

Interestingly, her winter home called, The Oaks, no longer exists.  But many of the other buildings do and they continue to be  lovingly cared for.  Bertha's beautiful gardens, including an aquaduct (!) are being slowly reclaimed.  In short it is a beautiful place to wander for a bit.  Currently the gardens and walkways are dotted with oversized samples offamous landscape Photographer Clyde Butchers work.  I am a fan :)

Soooo since I took a bunch of photos anyway, I hope you don't mind if I share a few .  I lumped them together by category so they are no representative of a linear timeline of the walk, just FYI.   Let's start with a few butterflies.  There are gardens galore so naturally there are butterflies.  And now they even have a small butterfly house!

Kind of naturally segues into gardens doesn't it?  Some of these gardens are formal, some are definitely less formal. All of them are beautiful :)

Part of the formal garden is watered via aquaduct!  It was so unexpected but absolutely wonderful.  Here are a few photos of it:

And of course, since this property is right there on Little Sarasota Bay, there are water pictures next.  Just a few, I swear!

  A little bit of one structure, a cute little rustic gazebo, appeared in one of the water photos in the previous category so lets call the next category "structures".  A rather loose category that includes buildings of all sorts, pergolas and more. Some quite grand, other's more humble:

We walked down paths, boardwalks and picked through barely distinguishable trails (new area not ready for prime time) and went up and down endless stairs and paths of all sorts.  Here area few:

And then there was the art.  Clyde Butcher was inspired by Ansel Adams and at one point in his career decided to focus solely on black & white landscapes.  His work is amazing!  You know how some music or writers or painters just seem to speak specifically to you?  Well that is how I feel about most of Clyde Butchers work.  I am endlessly wowed and inspired by him.  He actually lives in Florida by the way.  He and his artist wife live on acreage in the Big Cypress National Preserve where they are not just artists, but also reknowned conservationists.

Sadly, because I am not anywhere near as good a photograph as Mr Butcher, and didn't notice until it was too late, you will see My reflection and occasionally Tim's too in these photos.  Dang!  Oh well, here they are and I hope you enjoy Mr. Butcher's work!

Anyway, it was a wonderful Mother's Day!  I hope yours was even better though I'm not sure how that would be possible!

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