Game Day

 A Naples friend dresses a skeleton to support her teams on Game Day.  Crimson-and-white with IU on Saturday for Indiana University, blue-and-white with a horseshoe on Sunday for the Indianapolis Colts.

My alma mater wasn't much of a threat in intercollegiate sports.  But, I grew up in Eastern Massachusetts so I cheer for the Boston Red Sox/Celtics/Bruins and New England Patriots.  

For college sports, I adopt teams from places I have lived: the UConn Huskies and Ohio State Buckeyes.  Ohio State's football team is ranked #1 nationally and my friend's Indiana Hoosiers are #2.  OSU and IU don't play each other this fall.  If both get to the Big Ten championship and later to the national championship game, my friend and I won't be talking for a while.

Cars and License Plates

 

I admire fancy cars, and I like clever license plates.

I wish I saw the owner.  if s/he has a big belly, it would be worth a good laugh.

Good one.

A glistening silver Bentley.  Did I wait until the attractive blonde woman was in the frame?  Maybe.

The woman from the previous photo laughed when she and I both started to photograph this white Maserati.  She said her father had just bought a Maserati.  (My father's fanciest car was a Chevy.)

Silver

 

At the place where I went for some minor service on my car.

Halloween Decorations

 In the weeks before Christmas, the Victoria Park neighborhood is well known in Naples for going all out in decorating for the season.  

This year, some homes in the Victoria Park neighborhood are beginning to decorate for  Halloween, too.

Corkscrew Swamp Miscellany

 

There are fields of alligator flag plants.

Lichen is common in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, but this seemed like an unusual type.

Raccoon.

"Nurse logs" are fallen, decaying trees that are hosts to other forms of life.

Swamp lily.

Bromeliads.

A young alligator.

Trish is on the staff of Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary.  She is a retired audiologist who has a pilot's license and has flown all over the country.  

Cypress Forest

 

Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary protects the largest remaining forest of old growth bald cypress trees  in the world.  Some trees are more than 500 years old.

Many of the cypress trees are wrapped by stranger figs.  Strangler figs often kill other trees, but in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary they seem to have almost a symbiotic relationship with the cypress trees.  In hurricanes and other high wind events, the figs can help cypress trees to stand up.

A number of the biggest cypress trees have been named.  If my notes are right, this one is the Stoneman Douglas cypress.  It is named for Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, a noted journalist, writer and conservationist, best known for writing The Everglades: River of Grass.  Her 1947 book helped to change the public perception of the Everglades as a key natural asset instead of a worthless swamp.

Cypress trees have "knees," which are conical structures growing from the roots.  Some of the cypress knees in Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary are absolutely huge.  No one really knows what cypress knees are for.  Providing stability?  Helping roots get oxygen?  Who knows?

Sunflowers

 I visited Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, a 13,000 acre sanctuary operated by the National Audubon Society.  For a couple of weeks in October, Corkscrew's wet prairie is filled with fields of yellow flowers.

These are Southeastern sunflowers (Helianthus agrestis).  They are catching a lot of attention in Southwest Florida.  I have been to Corkscrew many times over the years and never saw them before.