Miscellanies of Life

Spring has arrived in full force now. Down here that means in about a week, summer should be here and be baking us alive. At this point already have the air conditioning running, but it’s nice to say goodbye to the cold. This is a busy season in our area. Baseball is in mid-season form (NCAA Division I on the road to Omaha, maybe). Late March and early April is the most colorful time of year in…

I love this short prayer below. I came across it this morning looking for some files from about fifteen years ago, and I am sure many have read this poem before. The author is only listed as “unknown Confederate Soldier” (here), so it comes from a few years back, but it is still worthy of circulation today.  We can still call on His name today in the 21st century and He will “most richly bless”…

The first official Iris blooms of Spring have arrived in our garden! Winter here always feels too cold and too long for how far south we live. But every year about this time we remember how quickly things start to bloom and warm up. If you were to look at the hardiness zones for gardens for very far South East Alabama, we happen to live just north of the line where the weather still gets a good…

It is finally starting to warm back up in the Deep South. And never a minute too soon either. Every time we think cooler weather might be nice and it goes below 60°F we remember that cold is not our thing. This week baseball is back and temps are in the 80°s so it’s getting better. I finally make it back here to the blog after spending the month of February buried deep in a rabbit hole called…

Our last day of driving got us to a great lunch spot at Lake Eufaula’s Lakepoint State Park Marina. It took me a lot longer to get to the edit for the last day than all the other days combined, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Here are a few of the shots from that driving day from Valdosta, GA to Lakepoint Marina, AL. If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around…

I’m taking a brief interlude to my posts around Florida today to remember a brief moment on a normal routine day. Last week, on the way to the store, I passed a boat ramp parking lot I’ve been to many times before that runs along the Chattahoochee River. As I drove by I briefly thought about how nice it would be to stop over there and take a walk in the middle of the day… even thought it’s cold,…

On Day 7 we were greeted with the rudest change in weather from the most beautiful 76° just 12 hours earlier to something near 30-40 mph winds and cold in the 45° range. No matter, I decided I wasn’t going to let a little wind deter me from my morning walk with a cup of coffee down the beach. If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post in Driving Around Florida Day 1, I’m posting a…

The Florida Turnpike was the bulk of our driving on Day 6, and there is a lot of Turnpike toll roads throughout Central Florida. This day we drove the bulk of Central Florida all the way to St. Augustine, which is just south of the big city of Jacksonville. Interestingly, St. Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565, which means it holds the title of the oldest continuously inhabited…

Today I’m on to Day 5 of our trip around Florida, which took us from nearby Homestead up the central part of the state to Lake Okeechobee. If you have never seen Lake Okeechobee, it is the closest thing there is to one of the Great Lakes only in the Southern U.S., meaning it is huge. But, it is not very deep and it has a levy-like berm built all the way around it, so it’s nearly impossible to see…

Our Day 4 in the Florida Keys started as a nearly magical morning, to use an overused phrase. We woke up on the ocean, in an incredible 72° humid-air breeze coming in through our vent fan. Silent except for the lapping water on the shore. I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out to walk the beach as the sun rose over the Atlantic Ocean. If you are new here, as I mentioned in my previous post…

Every year around this time I put together a single post to add to my set of Yearly Recap Albums. I started doing this as a way to take a more objective view of my photography, and to remind myself that photography isn’t based on what you shot yesterday, but what you have done concisely over longer periods of time. For this experiment each year I try to select about 24 images, 2 per month, to…

The Tamiami Trail was an amazing drive, and it landed us for the night at the Miccosukee Casino & Resort. This is a great stopping point before heading south, mainly because they have a huge open parking lot for RV’s and overnight parking (though they do charge you $25 to park). It is just west of Miami (and north of Homestead) which is just outside the craziness of the big city. Morning Sunrise…

We started out this day at a Flying J for breakfast and to get some work done. For some reason I love gas station photography (if that is a thing). This particular Pilot/Flying J outside Tampa was probably the smallest one we have been to in a long time, so it was tight quarters on all sides. The super heavy fog made for a non-existent sunrise and very low visibility. If you are new here, as I…

For the last week of 2025 and the start of 2026 I’m going to do a bit of cross posting from our trip to Florida. And really, who doesn’t want to see warm 78° sunshine and ocean at the end of December beginning of January. As I mentioned in my previous post, Van Work and Sunsets, we took a week to drive down the Florida west coast to the southern most point in the continental U.S. (Key West), and…

We have been working super hard on the van conversion over the last few months in anticipation of getting to go someplace warm in December. Florida is pretty much the only place warmer than where we are, so that was the plan back in the great heat of the summer. A few weeks ago we got to the point where we could take the van out for a test night, where we went to a free primitive campsite in…

I have posted a lot of different photos of a lot of different things on my site over the years, but I think this is the first handmade wooden art jewelry that has come across my desk. These pieces were donated by Deborah to our local hospital for the 2025 EAMC Foundation 12 Days of Christmas Virtual Auction to raise money for their new mental health facility construction project. They needed…

When I posted the blooms from our Tall Bearded Iris Immortality a few weeks ago I thought that was going to be the very last bloom of the summer-fall season, until a few days ago. We had a super surprise bloom of our Tall Bearded Iris called Ziggy, and it went bonkers. The temps in the garden were almost 80°F on Sunday, and now, Tuesday morning we have 23°F which has effectively killed off any…