Outings, Fairchild Gardens, Hanging with Janet and Tom

Tom and Janet are frugal, modest people. They feed us at home most of the time, but we were able to get them out for Janet’s birthday. Dinner at Moroccan Maroosh was followed by a stroll through an area of Coral Gables that’s been turned into a pedestrian mall with entertainment and restaurants galore. Nearby U. of Miami is a destination for serious jazz students and the mall provides a great venue for their talents on a warm moonlit night.

Our hosts took us to Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens when we first visited, and it’s become a South Florida habit for me. This spring the featured installation is “Balanced,” a series of life-sized aerial sculptures balanced perfectly on strong wire.

Big iguanas, invasives all over South Florida. 

And a new invasive, introduced 1976, an agama lizard, about a foot length in total and very colorful.

Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, the Floriday ecologist/environmentalist, initial alarm-raiser re the Everglades’ fragility.

Fairchild had a large Dale Chihuly exhibit here for my very first visit, and this piece was purchased by the garden’s women’s club for permanent installation.

Check out the size of this staghorn fern!

Ponytail tree

A drink at the Biltmore alongside the pool where Johnny Weismeuller trained.

Janet took us to a local Cuban restaurant on our last morning, good coffee and beautiful pastries.

Janet calculated this is our ninth visit since they moved to Florida 14 years ago, how embarrassing.