Seed Pods A'Plenty

If you visit Miami in the Summer, you will see many, many, many royal poinciana trees in bloom. They are mostly red, thus earning the name "flamboyant" tree. But they come in all shades from orange to dark red. Of course, my favorite ones are the rarer yellow variance. This is a royal poinciana, just about to grow new leaves to prepare for the color show in June. This shot may give you a clue as to how we have so many of this tree species in Miami. They produce an enormous amount of seed pods. They propagate so easily and can grow from nothing to a large tree in only a few years. I know, I have four such trees in my backyard when I had my back turned away and they sneaked in without warning.

Grove in March

If you see yellow here, it must be March. And sure enough, we are already in March, and it's time for the town to turn yellow. This is again downtown Coconut Grove. In two days, this street will be jammed solid because of the planned Colombian festival here in the Grove. I am debating to see whether I am courageous enough to venture back here next Saturday... Not so sure...

Overtown

This is Miami's Historical Overtown, Dunbar Elementary School sitting on NW 20th street and 5th avenue. You can see the painting on the wall signifying you are in the Art District of Miami. Ahead is NW 2nd avenue leading Northbound to the trendy Wynwood Kitchen and Bar that caters to the artists and the discriminating tourists.

Miracle of Life

This Dendrobium lays dormant all year round, looking like sad twigs with no sign of life. Without much warning these beautiful fragrant pink flowers open up to brighten the world around them for a few days... Then they are gone for another year... to return again and again without fail. Such is the miracle of life.

Your PC on the Blink

If I remember correctly, this service used to cost more than what it says today. Now, this is an interesting proposition: you pay US $7 to receive a diagnostic of what ails your computer. What do you think? Would you consider yourself smart to take this risk? I mean offer?

Triple X Bloom

It is quite amazing when you ponder about how things work around us. To say the least, it's mysterious and incomprehensible. Take the mango trees... Who is to say when and how they need to do something? Yet, by unison, all the mango trees in Miami are now in bloom. This does not mean we will have a bumper crop... it will all depend on the rain amount, the temperature fluctuations and the cold fronts, or lack of them. All Greek to me! This shot is from a spacious and quiet South Miami area where houses are big and land they sit on even bigger. If I were the owner of this house, the triple X will be gone in a minute!

ArseKissed

What did I tell you? Miami's drivers are really bad! So although I was stopped at a traffic light, minding my own business, I got my arsekicked today at about 1:45PM Eastern Standard Time. Well, I should be more polite to correct my harsh words with "I was rear-ended" today! Rear-ended? Sounds humiliating, but such is life and you take what it hands to you with grace, if you can. The first lame excuse that person gave me was "I didn't see your car!" Of course, you @#$%^!, you didn't! The real excuse was that he dropped something on the floor and his foot slipped! I bet you a dollar he dropped his cell phone! Now this no doubt will bring me tons of grief to deal with: the insurance industry first, then the body shop bandits are next in line. Didn't I just say something about Commerce Lane yesterday? How prophetic was that? I predict I will be on foot for at least... let's say 10 days to have the entire rear bumper replaced. My guess is that will cost about a small fortune US $4K or more. I also will predict that the color won't match and I will end up with a two tone colored car! Ain't life grand?

Todd's The Man

This Todd guy is not shy. He is claiming that he has the best sub on earth. In South Miami, Commerce Lane is a very charming small street that is just North of Sunset Drive, between SW 68th and 70th streets. This is where you can get your car back in shape after you have dinged and dented here and there. Then there is Todd. I've got to try his sub one of these days... but... looking at his shop, I am not so sure, especially that he has an offering of making copies to supplement his income. But you never can tell. I like the way he portrays his earth on the door. His South America is mirror image of the true shape, his Africa looks like India and his Europe looks like it was still with the shape from the mesozoic age. Like I said, you never can tell and this place may have the best sub on earth. Only seven bucks. It would be better if it were 4, then I would definitely come soon.

Montgomery Botanical Center

A nonprofit botanic garden established in 1959 and specializing in palms and cycads, Montgomery Botanical Center keeps living specimens from wild plant populations worldwide. The scientific collections are available for study in Montgomery's 120-acre botanical garden. Montgomery Botanical Center is home for various botanical research projects. It conserves rare species of palms, cycads and other rare plants; and educates the community through workshops, lectures, publications, and tours of its scientific plant collections. I had a rare privilege of touring this center today and was thoroughly impressed with the site. Here is my favorite view inside this great place fit for a meditation retreat.

How They Do It

If you wondered how they change the light bulbs on the sky high street lights, here's how.

Full Bloom

No doubt about this... This is my favorite part of town for me... Right in my neighborhood. This is the time of the year when flowering trees and bushes are competing to show off their colors... yellow... red... orange... white... purple... You name it, we have it.

BrandNew BrandSmart

Not too long ago, this retail space was empty for a while and now it is occupied by a new BrandSmart USA store. It's a bit on the small side for this kind of store that sells quite a large inventory. I guess this brand store will survive in this economy because they really do have very low prices for their ware.

Hidden Canvas

South Miami has lots of land and many houses sit on huge lots. Along this now abandoned rail road track is this big house with a wooden fence in its backyard. I really like the mural painted by this artist who apparently signed his/her name as HA. I wonder how long it took for this painting to be completed.

Overindulged America

I can't help to use this photo... Although I don't like to doctor my photos, these have been "mosaic blurred" so the persons here cannot easily be identified. Here we are at the famous Colonel's place from Kentucky. The big ad photo you see on the right says "NEW Doublicious (TM) Try it in original recipe @ or grilled. Obviously, that cannot be any good.

Chicken Wings

It's getting late on a Friday night... and I MUST have some chicken wings... PLEASE! So I went to my favorite place, Sports Grill on Sunset Drive and about 102nd avenue. Of course, it's Friday night and the place is packed. Customers are sent to wait outside for about 30 minutes or more before they can get a table. This is what it looks like at about 8:30pm today. You don't see me because I'm the guy taking the photo.

Go Canes!

I've been really busy and down... so I had two excuses to neglect my blog... No more... Let's get going again... I went to a UM woman basketball game tonight. The small home arena is on Ponce de Leon on the main UM campus. We are ranked 12th in the nation and battling tonight our arch enemy the "hated" Florida State Seminole FSU and they rank 14th. It was an exciting game. Unfortunately, this was my sight all night. I could only see half the game, when it happened on the other side of the court. We had fun and we won 84-68. Go Canes!

Borders

Across from Shorty's on US-1 is this great bookstore Borders Book Shop. This store has lots of technical books that are hard to find... until now when they can easily be found on the internet. That I think is a major reason why this chain is about to be extinct. In fact, rumors have it that Borders is about to go bankrupt. They said it began to delay paying its bills from the publishers. That is usually the ominous prediction of bankruptcy. I think it's too small to become a Barnes & Nobles. In any case, I no longer buy paper books because I read mine in digital, non DRM, of course. What's DRM, you asked? That's the Dumb Rude Method (Digital Rights Management, yeah right!) that was invented to protect the books sold in digital format. The whole world hates it and I won't ever buy these books again.

By the way, the strange neon reflections you see are selling beer at Shortys'.

Count Them

Look, there are really Five Guys making burgers here. If you don't believe me, count them.

New Year Art

There is a very astute art that is being demonstrated here: making this tree flower on the first new lunar year day, which is today, February 3rd. This is an Ochna integerrima. I think the secret is to strip the entire tree of its leaves on the right date prior to the anticipated blooming date which should be right on the first day of the year. I don't think that is that easy, but the owner of this tree sure knew how to do it. It's blooming right on time as it should. Happy New Year of the Cat (Rabbit if you are Chinese.) One day, I would like to learn why it's not the same animal as it is for the other 11 years.

CasaIdeas

Let me tell you one thing... Stores in Miami do not last long. They change so often I can't keep track of what's where and when. This is a brand new big store anchoring the Sunset place. I don't remember what it used to be... but this is brand new (to me.) It looks like they did a lot of face lift to the outside that must have cost a ton of money... to last a few months is my guess.