Springs Break

Hello from your returned-to-Gainesville, come-down-in-the-world penpal! I have been back in my room at Lee's for a week, and although I'm glad to be returned to normal routine and my room, which I like a lot, I miss having a whole lakeside retreat to myself. And I miss my bus pals: April, her dog Howdy and the driver John. John gave me a bag of apples from a farm called "Turkey Knob" which I shared with my class, and which I felt showed we'd struck up a nice relationship. I missed home when I tried making jokes about turkey knobs, I don't think that translates here. Or maybe the jokes were just bad. Or maybe they are just more serious about turkeys over here (good luck avoiding eating turkey in Florida - it's not a once-in-a-year hazard like at home but a perennial danger! Yuck!!)


Juniper Springs, photo by Julie O'Brien

A few weeks ago on a Friday we had a SAW class visit to two local-ish springs. We carpooled and drove in convoy about an hour outside Gainesville, first to Juniper Springs, then on to Silver Glen. Florida is on top of a large aquifer - it's their great natural resource. An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock.

Let us pinch stuff from Wikipedia:

The Floridan aquifer system, composed of the Upper and Lower Floridan aquifers, is a thick sequence of carbonate rock which spans an area of about 100,000 square miles in the southeastern United States. It underlies the entire state of Florida and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina. It supplies 10m people with drinking water, and is the main supply for cities in northern and central Florida - which is where Gainesville is. So the springs, which occur all over, are areas where this water comes out of holes in the aquifer - the water averages between 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit, so quite cool, but beautiful and clear and full of fish, turtles and, in season, manatees!

Class pic! We are holding For Sale signs as we used them for underwater drawing! All pics above by Julie O'Brien.

The springs trip was lead by Tom's friend Margaret Tolbert, a local artist with a keen interest in the waterways here. Her friend Julie came with her underwater camera, hence the lovely photos above. I also took a ton - it was absolutely beautiful at both these springs, and what I'd imagined in my mind when I'd thought of Florida - clear water and jungle. It was a wonderful day, and really nice to hang out with everyone on a day trip too!

The above photos are taken at Juniper Springs, our first stop and my favourite spring. 

After swimming about and spending about an hour and a bit here, we got back in convoy and went on to another springs, Silver Glen. I didn't like the water bit here as much, but there was an incredible walk around the back along a river and through jungle, some pics from that below!

Happy to be in the jungle. Gators t-shirt, natch.

I wish these photos could better capture the beauty of this walk. I felt very lucky to have seen it.

IN SUMMARY:

'Gator sightings: 0. I feel I'm becoming a bit of a joke. I'm tempted to shoot the moon now, and try to be the lone person who spends eight months in Florida without a single gator-sighting.

Other animal news: I saw a turtle when I was kayaking in Melrose - more about that anon. And Mara my classmate saw an armadillo outside her house last week!! Then the next day she saw vultures eating an armadillo near her house - she's hoping not the same one, but it all seemed Peak Florida. Also did you know you get syphilis off armadillos? Everyone here seems to know that, but I didn't. Please send jokes about sex with armadillos to the usual address.

Insect updates: Lee my landlord says the extremely cockroach-like beetles in the kitchen at night are in fact only cockroach-adjacent, and gave them some cute name like bootle bugs. I am unfooled - a cockroach by any other name is still a foul, unwelcome, carapace-covered sponge dweller in my book.

Until soon, thanks for reading my friends! I miss you! xx

Santa Fe Lakeside

Greetings from your currently NOT Gainesville-correspondant, but your MELROSE person-on-the-ground!

When I asked my landlord if I could stay on renting my room at his house, there were two weekends that he'd pre-booked with guests. The first weekend I went to the Gainesville Retreat Centre, and for this final time of exile, Lee arranged with his friends that I would cat-sit and stay in their house for a week while they're away. 

Digital picture of the garden.

So here I am in the bustling metrop of Melrose - actually Melrose is an intersection with a gas station and a food shop that looks like the after-picture of a siege. The gas station, Chiappini's, is (according to Lee) a famous spot, and has been in the Chiappini family since the 30s. We met one of the brothers inside and he's selling up for $1m, if any of my back-home friends fancy a slight change of life! They sell fishing tackle and boast an assortment of slightly boozy-looking clientele who hang around drinking beers and smoking outside - but you could probably change all that, if you wanted!

See below for how I'm slumming it this week:

View from the house porch.

Looking to the right from the jetty.

Penny and Trey's jetty! 

The lovely house, looking back from the lake.

House through the cypresses.

Behind the "downtown" of Melrose is Santa Fe Lake, and Penny and Trey's house is one of about twenty bordering a bay that comes off the lake. It's an unbelievably beautiful place - a lovely house with a garden that leads to a jetty down to the water. I've been swimming, having been assured the alligators are just babies round here - and the water is lukewarm and whiskey-coloured from the tanins in the cypress (all the better for the allys to hide in, you might say). I've also done quite a bit of painting from their garden and cycling round the lake. I'm here until Monday, but I'd quite like to stay forever!

Here come lots of watercolours of the garden view and one of the lake round the corner!

There are two bus services a day between Melrose and Gainesville - it's about 45 minutes between the two. I phone the dispatch centre in Jacksonville after 6am, and tell the operator where the bus can stop and pick me up. On Monday there was just me and a woman called April on the 8am bus out, and the 4pm bus back. We each pay $2 each way, so I guess there are other buses subbing this Magenta Line! All the buses here have bike racks on the front - I'm borrowing Penny's bike, and here it is on the bus and ready to go!

This is actually from a photo of the (boiling!!) Sweetwater Wetlands.

I'll write again when I'm back in boring old Gainesville ;-) xx