next park

On another day not so long ago, the next park of our summer youth trip to Florida was to the other half of Universal, called Islands of Adventure. Because of stopped up sinus and generally not feeling well, I was self-appointed to sit with the "stuff" - back packs, ponchos, pocketbooks, etc - while the rest of our group rides the rides.

Given this time of mental reflection, I was almost taken aback by the amounts and varieties of flowers, plants and trees all around. Today's park seems to have much more exotic and tropical growth than the other. Many of the flowers must only grow in Florida because I had never seen most that were planted there. In one location there were at least four types of palm trees - from small to the very tall.

The palms reminded me of a story my uncle from Florida told about the palm tree he tried to get rid of in his yard. He kept pouring salt on and around it, thinking - as would I - that this would kill the tree. As it turns out, one thing palms really love is a saline condition in which to thrive. Different steps had to be taken to do away with the unwanted tree.

I doubt any of the park's palms were of the coconut variety as that would be an accident looking for a place to happen. I can almost see the headlines: "Universal's customer casualty was callously conked by careening, cascading coconuts".

Whoever has charge of the park's vegetation is certainly doing a bang up job - of course God did better by creating them all to begin with.

Later, as I sat at lunch, a fairly large bird - brown, but possibly in the grackle or crow family - lit on a trash can not six feet away, looking for food and not at all bothered by the multitude of humans passing nearby. I continue in near perpetual amazement and awe at God's creations. mreddie