Tropical birds, flowers, and lizards???

Today's card features the word dies from MFT, Absolutely Fabulous. It is accented with a bird and some flowers and leaves from MFT's Birds of Paradise and Blissful Blooms. These were painted with my Zig Real Brush Water Color Markers. I also colored the letters on the Absolutely part since they just disappeared into the plaid.

I'm putting this into the MFT Color challenge # 48. The purple isn't quite spot on, but I'm going for it any way!



Now, my tropical story. I love living in Florida, even if the wildlife can be a little scary. There's a snake that hangs around the back door at work. He's shy and harmless so not many people have seen him. Just yesterday I saw a 2 foot iguana in the parking lot at Tijuana Flats. Sure, if you are going to see an iguana, in the parking lot of a Mexican food restaurant seems very appropriate. Then when I got home I saw this GIANT green lizard on the tree in my front yard. Honestly, it's hard to tell, but he is absolutely fabulous. At a distance. This guy was between 12 and 14 inches long.

Edited to add: I have researched him, and he is a Knight Anole, native to Cuba, and can live 10 to 15 years. Wow.

Remember my Big Louie story from a few years ago? I'm not doing that again,  no way, no how.

Well, it sure got my attention

Last week I was on vacation in north/central Florida, staying with my sister in DeLand. We made a day trip up to Gainesville, where I got a library card and we visited a museum. The museum was all about dogs and wolves, with a bunch of Florida natural history thrown in. There was also a butterfly house, which was awesome.

The Devil's Millhopper is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, by the way. Phooey!!

On Friday I went by myself to see a roadside attraction I've had my eye on for years. Barberville Produce at the corner of Highways 17 and 40, has the biggest, most attention getting yard art I've ever seen.

Yes, I wanted to climb on the chickens, but they must have seen me coming. Ideally I would have had someone with me to take my picture with the big critters, but this was a solo trip for me. My sister and her man had gone to Jacksonville for a football game. Oh, and they live nearby and had already seen this place.

They had some local raw honey, limited produce, and boiled or roasted peanuts. As I wandered all over the place and took a lot of pictures, the smell of boiled peanuts was omnipresent.  I couldn't help but think of chicken soup when I saw the size of the feet on those big chickens.

Did I mention I've had my eye on this place for years? I was always on the way to somewhere else and there was no time to dawdle over this stuff. 

These 2 butts are the back side of stools. Funny!

There was a lot of decorated Mexican pottery and enamel, and those bowls in back of this chichen are actual sinks. Thank goodness, I didn't see a single yard toilet in the place. Yay!

My HOA is pretty strict about yard art, so I didn't entertain the idea of bringing home a cow or dinosaur. This stuff is designed to get attention, and it certainly does.

The "produce" was tomatoes, kiwi fruit, mangoes, and watermelon. There were no green veggies. There was also some candy which I didn't look at. Yay me.

I did get a picture of my hand on the big horse's nose. This picture is my computer wallpaper, at least for a while.