Here are some things that remind me of Florida. While I was there last weekend I tried to take some pictures of things that were uniquely South Florida. I'll share some of them (also pictures from our old house there) in the next several days.

It's hard to see here (too late in the morning, the dew had all burned off), but there is a little spiderweb spanned across the blades of grass. When I rode to school with the boys in the morning, the grass would be positively dripping with dew, and when you looked down you'd see just thousands and thousands of these little webs sparkling in the sun. Some were so small, only an inch in diameter, and yet they were perfect little orb webs. Those were hard-working spiders, reweaving their webs whenever anyone tromped on it, or the lawn mowers destroyed them.

Here's another spider and a web-- we called this type of spider a crab spider. It has a different proper name, but they just looked like crabs to us. These are EVERYWHERE in Florida. We even got a couple in our house making gigantic webs across the living room. They are pretty small spiders, maybe only 1/4 to 3/8 inch across, but they make really big webs.

South Florida is incredibly beautiful. One of the most beautiful sights to see is the sky at sunset after a summer thunderstorm. This picture does not do the clouds justice, this wasn't a particularly breathtaking display. I remember driving up Flamingo and hardly being able to keep my eyes on the road, just wanting to drink in the gorgeous view of these gigantic billowing thunderheads lit up with all sorts of colors. Nowhere I have been can come close to Florida sunsets.

This is an anole lizard. They are absolutely ubiquitous in South Florida. This isn't a great picture because these little suckers are FAST. The only way to catch them is to wait until one has been trapped in your house for a couple of days. Then they get really slow and lethargic and you can easily pick them up. There are lots of different varieties, some with a yellow stripe down the back, some pure black, some green, some brown like this one. They do like to come in the house a lot and sadly many of them meet their demise there. Pretty much whenever I vacuumed behind the couches or chairs, I'd find one or two petrified lizards. Once my mom and I found one that had did mid-step, because it was petrified standing perfectly erect, it's legs in the middle of an apparent step. Brigham and Joseph always wanted to catch one of these guys outside (they loved the little flower patch right outside our front door), but we never quite managed it.

Here is a mating pair of the little hoot owls that lived out in the greenway behind our house. They live in holes in the ground, you can see these two guarding their hole. But if you get too close, they'll fly across the grass and perch on one of the cables coming from the power lines back there.

When I got up closer, one of the owls flew away, but this one stood there watching me intently. If you walk past them, they really can turn their heads almost all the way around!

Oops! Got too close. Off she goes!