In the Gardens of Earthly Delights

Yesterday, Friday (6/19), I took my first field trip into central Florida. After morning coffee at 7-11 with Marge (the day-time clerk), I headed west on Old Dixie Road, under I95, and on until it crossed US Hwy 1. I headed north on Hwy 1 toward St. Augustine. I’ve been traveling between my home and work in Palm Coast by I95 most of the time. The traffic on that road just makes you want to push the speed limit and just“get there.” Hwy 1, while a major highway, says, “Take a look around. Enjoy the scenery as you travel.”
Other than a few small farms and small homes in the woods there is nothing of great tourist wonder to see people living their lives. This is such a change from the Florida we knew when we had only visited Orlando—the land of concrete and faux-elegance.

The distance to St. Augustine is about 40 miles, a nice drive. About 8 miles south of St. Augustine I passed “Lambert’s Nursery.” I did a quick (and probably illegal) u-turn and stopped in the middle of the nursery. I was immediately welcomed by a pod of calico cats and an old black lab, all of whom soon scattered to the shade again.

Around me were plants I had only seen in the “Indoor Plants” areas of Minnesota nurseries but here there were pots and pots of them just sitting around outside. And many were HUGE. I rambled through the shade-covered flats and around the 3-gallon bush area, then it hit me. I felt like a kid in a candy store but one filled with candy I had never, ever tasted. I hope the pictures I’ve posted here will give you some idea of Lambert’s and the wonders of Florida horticulture.

I soon got to St Augustine, the oldest continually inhabited “European” city in the western hemisphere (1565). They had to add “European” because Mexico City and other Central American cities are older.

My first taste of St. Augustine was at the San Sebastian winery. There, you get to see a 20 minute movie about the company and wine-making, a quick tour of a small bottling area, and then the real reason for the stop—wine tasting. The tour group tasted six or 7 wines, with suggestions for parings with food and such. I learned that Florida wines mostly come from a native grape that has been domesticated and in some cases crossed with other varieties. For the most part, the wines are on the sweet side but are not like Concord grapes.

The historic part of the city is really quite interesting. It’s history starts from the 1560s of course, but there are some interesting buildings from the late 1800s when Flagler (the Florida version of James J. Hill) built his railway into Florida. I walked the “old-town” shopping district that was a good blend of real historic value and pure American commercialism. I walked around the famous fort that dates from the early Spanish times and was used by the US Army until 1900.

From the fort, I meandered through an old neighborhood that stretched north between Hwy 1 and the ocean. In many ways, the house reminded me of the garden district of New Orleans. There were some huge mansions surrounded by brick walls and garden and just a street over were some small, houses close together with porches and lots of old trees and vines growing everywhere. Both the mansions and the small houses seemed rooted, part of the land.

I drove Florida Hwy A1A south to get home. It winds its way along the shoreline and presents the whole range of housing—from gigantic houses on stilts to the shabby mom-and-pop motels to pristine, uninhabited costal landscape.