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