Take a photo walk in my neighbourhood!

OK, I shamelessly stole this idea from Annika! I decided to bring along the camera on one of our daily walks. The dogs gotta go anyway so why not! Normally this route would take me maybe 40 minutes, but because we stopped and took 78 pictures (I had no idea I took that many, but don't worry, I won't post them all!), plus wrangling two dogs and a camera... it took 1 hour to do the walk! I kept inside our subdivision, so there is only residential houses here. Our neighborhood was started in the beginning of the 90s, with some houses from the early 2000's.

For you who are familiar with Florida, you will notice that it is not its green self! We have a tremendous draught going on right now (hence all the brush fires, see post further below). Our rainy season starts soon, and then we can look forward to a summer of exploding colors everywhere. Right now, not so much...

OK, here we go...

OK lets go mom! Gotta go! Open the dooooooor!!!

And off we are!

Our subdivision is called Braden River Lakes, and that is indeed a very fitting name! Wherever you turn there is a lake, and the Braden River skirts the area towards the south. In this picture you can see how low the water is. We actuallu have tides in these lakes since they are connected to the river, which is connected to the Gulf of Mexico. The water is also slightly brackish. But this is not low tide, just DRY!

One of my favorite trees, the Jacaranda!

A closer look

Some poor oranges still hanging on for dear life

Oleander is beautiful but VERY poisonous! We just removed a large shrub from our backyard, in between the kid and the dogs we thougth it was best...

Very American picturesque

Some very odd looking seed pods on a tree with yellow flowers. It was covered in them! Like little alien things...

Speaking of odd, something I have noticed about Florida is the grass. In one picture you see normal grass (to me). Here we call it "northerner" grass or "golf course" grass. You don't normally see this in someones lawn. The Florida grass is very robust and sturdy, very large, broad leaves, as you can see.

This particular house is the exact model we live in. It is even built in the same year. The only difference this house costs $250,000 MORE than our house costs. Why? Well, it just happens to be on the river! I really don't think that premium is worth it...

This is the view in the back, off the river itself.

Here is our pool area, right on the river as well. They also have volley ball courts, basket ball, tennis, picnic area and a playground.

The hibiscus is a Florida staple.

As you can see it is rather breezy today!

One of my favorite palm trees, the wanderer palm, also known as the triangle palm.

Lots of lakes!

More lakes...

And more!

Well, this IS why we came out here... bring out the bag! (At least one thing those flimsy American grocery bags are good for!)

Gotta sniff EVERYTHING!

This giant white Egret kept following us.

This walkway is really nice, with a cooling canopy of trees and glittering lakes on both sides.

OK, mom. Which way now?


You can still see some of the smoke haze from this morning, even though the wind has done a great job clearing out a lot of it.

Yay, we are back at our house! We have two very tired dogs with their tongues hanging down to the ground... My office (I work from home) is behind the two windows on the front right, and I am probably sitting right behind that tree inside that window right now ;-)!

OK, no Starbucks like Annika, but a cool drink of sloppy water will do!

Thanks for walking with us!