Two Days at the Shore Back in January

 Hi everyone. 

Today I have 2 pages to share for Chris' Where in the World challenge over at Art Journal Journey.  These pages go back to winter when I made them in my Florida journal. This journal was one I put together during February and March after the hubby and I came home for a week's trip to various parts of Florida in late January.

I haven't posted these pages yet however, so they should work for Art Journal Journey.

This first page has to do with a state park we visited outside of St. Petersburg. We had spent the first part of the day at the Salvador Dali Museum and also at the Sunken Gardens within the city of St. Petersburg. Both my husband and I wanted some out of the city time, and since we still had a few hours until it would be dark, we drove out to this park on the outskirts of the city.  

I sprayed some water on my page to wet it, and then I inked it. The background reminds me of the sky with some clouds and blue.

I die cut the big leaf and stamped the sunglasses. I added in the beach scene.

Fort Desoto State Park is a huge, beautiful oceanside park, and it has some fantastic walking trails. We walked this one along the shore and through the remains of the old fort that had been located here. That fort was what the park has been named after. 

My second spread is also from this same journal. This spread has to do with 2 museums we visited on the East Coast of Florida, about an hour south of the Kennedy Space Center.  One museum was the Mel Fisher Treasure Museum, and the other was the McLarty Treasure Museum.

All of the McLarty Museum and some of the Mel Fisher Museum had to do with the 1715 Fleet. The 1715 Fleet  was a group of 12 Spanish ships that were bringing (to Spain) a lot of looted gold and other treasures from  South America. Havanna (Cuba) was the biggest city in the New World, and it was also the location where all the precious materials arrived after being shipped out of the South American  colonies. From Havana, these commodities would be loaded onto ships to be taken  back to Spain. Some of those fleets sailed up along the coast of Florida.

These 12 ships in the 1715 Fleet were sailing to Spain. One ship's captain chose to sail further offshore, and his ship was able to make the entire journey. The other 11 ships stayed together and then ran into a hurricane when they reached the San Sebastian area of Florida. The ships sunk directly off the shore from where the MacLarty Museum is located. 

This journal page is made mostly with some old stickers. On the right I did stamp the water and the rays at the top. I also used a gold paper ship and a "fake" Spanish Pieces of Eight. These coins were called Pieces of Eight because to make change you would just cut the coin into sections. I have a little bag of these fake coins that I bought at the Mel Fisher Museum in Key West when we visited there several years ago. I thought I needed to add one because of all the treasure I saw in both museums, including many solid silver pieces of eight.

This photo (above)  is the spot where the 11 ships wrecked and where the survivors came ashore. And below, is yours truly in front of  a sign outside the MacLarty Museum.

That's all for me today. I hope your Thursday (or whatever day you are reading this) goes well!

Oldies with Numbers

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you.

Today I am here to share another page, well actually 3 pages, for Matilde's It's All About Numbers challenge at Art Journal  

These 3 pages  are all from back last winter that I never posted. They are pages in my Florida travel journal. You might remember that at the end of January my husband and I tried to escape from winter for a few days in the Florida sunshine. Well it wasn't very warm in Florida, but we did  do a few things that were on each of our bucket lists. 

There are numbers in between black squares on this stenciled piece of deli paper. I used one of the little key card holders from the trip as a little folder to write down some secret (smile)  info.

And if that doesn't work, then these last 2  pages in my Florida travel journal should be perfect because they have a lot of obvious numbers on them.

And rather than more Iceland photos since I haven't had a lot of time to organize them, let me show you a few garden blooms that I came home to.

A few roses are coming out, and hurrah- I thought I would totally miss my rises. That made me sad, but luckily it was damp and cool and they are still blooming.

And my Siberian irises are looking amazing. 

And last year I planted a couple of new iris bulbs, and look at the color on this one.

And it is also the start of peony season.

Due to some weird winter weather, a lot of flowering shrubs and trees lost their top buds. You can see that on my orange azalea. Sadly, it only bloomed along the bottom this year. So did my weeping cherry tree. I took this next photo before we left on our trip. 

But not my pink azalea. It's been blooming beautifully.

OK, enough said for today.

Thanks for stopping by my blog. It is always appreciated.

 

More of the Edison and Ford Winter Homes-and a Snow Report

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week. 

 Yesterday we were dumped on with snow, but not as much as they got out in the western part of the state where my daughter lives. Some towns had 32 inches/81 cm of snow by late afternoon yesterday, and the snow wasn't done falling at that point. I wrote this post last night so I can't tell you what our final snow amounts are until I  get out of bed and check this morning. 

But here's what it looked like around 6 PM last night when I went out to do my last back deck shovel of the day.

The snowy fence next to the bird feeder is my entrance into my veggie garden. Who knows when I'll be able to get into my garden, but I bet it's not going to be gardening season too soon. 😕

FYI-today's post is rather long and photo heavy.

In my last post (yesterday's T Day), I wrote a brief introduction to the Edison and Ford winter estates in Fort Meyers Florida. Today let me share some photos as well as my Florida journal pages I made based on our visit back in January.

I had read a book in 2022 about Ford's and Edison's friendship called  The Vagabonds by Jeff Guinn. That book was about many road trips these men took together, along with Harvey Firestone (of Firestone Tires) and also John Burroughs (an environmentalist). Having been told about these historic homes and also having read that book had made me want to visit their estates in Fort Meyers.

One thing that I heard about before we visited the winter homes was the amazing banyan tree you see when you arrive.  This tree was planted by Thomas Edison about 100 years ago because one thing he was experimenting with was finding another source for the plant latex used to make rubber. (It turned out that rubber trees still have the best plant latex for rubber production.)

Banyan trees are related to fig trees, and they grow  all these prop roots down from their branches. As you can see in both of the above photos, it looks like you are in a forest of banyan trees, but this is actually just one tree with many many prop roots. It's huge.

I wasn't sure how to show this in my journal, but I really like this abstract style page I ended up making.

Edison and his wife were also both big into gardening. And of course Edison, being a prolific inventor, also had a very large well stocked lab to work on his experiments during the winter when he was away from his home lab in New Jersey. That inspired me to make this next page in my journal.

In honor of the Edison's love of plants and to also help raise money to maintain the estates, there is a great garden center where you can buy plants and other garden supplies. Good thing I was flying and  not driving home because I could have gone crazy otherwise.

And here's some garden photos from on the estate itself.

These next 2 photos are banana orchids which I found really fascinating.

And I love all the bamboo textures, colors and designs.

And let me include some of Edison's studio photos also, including this fun statue outside the entrance to his working space.

And I love this vintage lab.

And finally, here's my journal page I made about my lunch after we left the estate. I shared this restaurant with you yesterday.

I'll share more photos from my visit in this weekend's post.

I'm linking my trip journal pages up to Valerie's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey

Thanks for visiting.

More From My Florida Journal

Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you. 

I thought today for Valerie's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey I would share a few more pages from my Florida travel  journal. My theme today is nature because when I travel I always try to find a few places (or maybe more than a few) where I can enjoy the natural world and not the man made one.

I'll start with this mangrove tree page I made. I added some info that I picked up at a National Park visitors center.

And my bird pages are also made with some info I picked up at a National Park visitor's center as well as my old college bird book that I am now chopping up. It's painful in some ways to cut it apart, but the info is really outdated because some common bird names and  many of the bird ranges have changed in the decades since I was in college. (Plus I have a couple of newer ones with actual photographs as well as drawings so I don't need this older one.)

One place we visited south of St. Petersburg was DeSoto National Memorial. We planned to walk after we watched a bit of living history, but the wind that day was brutal. You'd have thought we were back in New Hampshire- smile.

We ended our Florida roadtrip in Fort Meyers on the Gulf Coast. The shells on this next page really aren't appropriate because when we went to walk the  beach we became  distracted by all the hurricane  damage there still was. Hurricane Ian hit Fort Meyers practically dead on last September. I've never been to a site of a major disaster before, and it truly was mind blowing, even after 4 months.

I added the shells anyway because I liked them on my page. 

I cut this SWFL (southwest Florida) image you see on the next page out of one of those freebie maps you can pick up when you visit tourist areas. I wasn't sure how to show the all the hurricane damage on a page in my journal, but I think the fact that so many people have pulled together to make a difference is what is really important. 

And that's my art for today. It's turning into a busy week on  my end, and although some things on the calendar are just appointments,  at least I'm not sitting home just watching  the piles of snow slowly melt. Smile. 

I hope you're having a lovely week too.