My Dad & Stepmom are part of the annual snowbird migration to Florida, and I can’t think of a better place to get away to in the winter doldrums than South Florida. It’s not exactly easy to get there from here in the Pacific Northwest, but I finally made the journey and it was exactly the right thing to raise my spirits and Vitamin D levels!
Obviously the landscape is quite different there than what I’m used to at home, and many of the landscape plants were larger versions of what I think of as house plants. And the cultivated landscape is quite different than the natural landscape. My parent’s place is a golf-course community around a series of “ponds” adjacent to a wilderness area. There are wonderful birds everywhere, and the ponds host turtles and alligators.
We also visited Key West during my trip and I got to visit the Audubon House & Tropical Gardens, which is a beautiful 1830’s home with surrounding gardens.
Seeing all this gorgeousness was the perfect antidote to the winter blues — just being outside, in the sun, on a warm day was such a treat. Here’s hoping they add a direct flight from PDX!
