March 14 Wednesday Day 17

Today is going to be one of my favorite arts and garden exhibits. So we are headed to the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables with an exhibition of Dale Chihuly: at www.fairchildgarden.org or www.chihuly.com . We arrived and found that today was volunteer appreciation day with a program and luncheon. That did not prevent us from doing our thing. This garden has 3,500 palm trees and over 600 variety’s, to many to list. It spreads over many acres and has ponds, paths and buildings to view. We were greeted by glass bulbs, around two feet in diameter tied to concrete blocks laying on the bottom of the pond, 30 to 40 of them. They were his Walla Walla onions, ideas from his home state of Washington. Then we saw floating free form what looked like ice pieces floating in the next pond. They turned out to be made of poly moldings. Colors of the glass ranging throughout the spectrum of color. His color uses in all his displays are brilliant and deep color not dark. He had found a red he liked when working in Norway, this he used in a desert setting He had hundreds upon hundreds of objects outside and in the buildings. Some mimicked the palms or reeds and hanging plantings. How can one describe his brilliance? One way is to go to the Museum of Art in Minneapolis or The Mayo Clinic Gonda building. There are many chandlers hanging in there entry way.

We followed paths through the park seeing a cardinal, many iguana and small lizards. We also saw a great egret snacking on a lizard. Again I did not find a snake, have been looking especially hard over the last two days. One of the main plantings we wanted to see was the gingerbread palm. Its growth pattern is similar to a bunch of celery with the centers taken out with 5 or 6 individual palms 20 feet tall. We also saw the flowering bush called yesterday, today and tomorrow; this plant has a blossom that is purple yesterday, pink today and white tomorrow. Similar to a tree we saw in Amsterdam.

We ate on the grounds, Shirleen ham quiche and I a Cuban type sandwich, grilled with pickles, ham, mojo pork slices and white cheese.

Mid-afternoon we headed into Miami on Route 1, the same one we started out from at mile zero in Key West. Along the way we turned down route A1A into Miami Beach and traveled through its art deco area. Again the housing was orange, pink, light green and many combinations of those Mediterranean colors. The traffic was not as bad as I had expected, seeing a Lamborghini, Mercedes and BMW’s of many varieties, some never seen before, Bentley’s, Rolls Royce and Ferrari’s. Of course I have noted many Corvettes.

We turned down some of the back streets and saw many great styled and large houses with well trimmed vegetation, both in Coral Gables and Ft. Lauderdale.

We ate at Oasis Café on Seabreeze Blvd in Ft. Lauderdale, Shirleen’s mudslide was not up to expectations. I had a mango margarita which was tasty. Shirleen’s grouper fish wrap and my seafood paella that had grouper, scallops, shrimp and mussels with saffron rice. jerr