Happy Valentine’s Day – A Fun Afternoon With Friends

(Avon Park, FL)  Hi 54  Lo 31 -- Happy Valentine's Day to all our readers!  Love is in the air and my special love is my hubby. Thank you for so much darling.  (Same to you Babe. You're the light of my life, my friend, and soul mate. I love you!  Jim)  I hope everyone had a great day with someone they love.

I had to get up before the sun again the morning for an 8am dental appointment. It takes me awhile to wake up and I wanted breakfast, thinking it would be a rough appointment. A few days ago I had my teeth cleaned and had a tooth that was really hurting the next day. It just hasn’t been the same, so I made an appointment for this morning. Of course like most things, it hasn't hurt since, but I kept my appointment. After a lot of checking it turns out that my gum was irritated by the cleaning. I was planning to have the tooth pulled today, but thank goodness it wasn't necessary.
 
I got back by 8:30 and thought about going back to bed for awhile, but instead I watched some taped TV shows, read blogs and played games on Facebook. Later in the morning I went for my walk around the park. It's sure a longer day when you get up so early. Tomorrow I'll be back to my normal sleeping hours, getting up at 9:30.

Nick Russell, writer of The Gypsy Journal, wrote a couple of mysteries, Big Lake and Big Lake Lynching, that are available for download on Amazon. They've been getting good reviews and are selling really well. I downloaded Big Lake to my Kindle app on my Droid phone, and I'm looking forward to reading it. It's only 99 cents, so those of you who own Kindles should check it out. It's also available in printed form on Amazon.

This afternoon we went with Kathleen and Jon to Henscratch Wineries. It’s a very small rustic place out in the orange groves south of Sebring. Along with four or five varieties of wine they also sell farm fresh eggs, laid daily by all the chickens they have all over the place.
 
The grapevines were bare for the winter.


The store






Inside are the typical jellies and sauces you see in most grove stores.


A real chicken standing next to a fake one in the store.


One of the strawberries. They weren't quite ready for picking yet.


Kathleen walking down the rows of strawberries.


Jon then took us McCracken Farms just east of Avon Park. They grow and sell vegetables of all kinds. The new way of farming is Styrofoam containers that are up off the ground. No back breaking picking anymore.


Onions in the stackable pots


BIG carrots!


Jon walking past the Mustard Greens.


The irrigation system is a tiny tube that waters the stack of pots from the top, then it drains the way to the bottom pots.




There’s a lot of plants in a very small space.


We ended our day with reservations at the The Hotel Jacaranda for their big Valentine's Day Buffet. Jim and I were there on Feb 5th for their Sunday Grand Buffet, and the food was excellent then, and it was also excellent today.


Jon and Kathleen's wedding anniversary is this week, so they had another reason to celebrate today. Happy anniversary guys... thank you guys for spending this special day with us, we had a wonderful time.

We got back home and relaxed the rest of the evening. Tomorrow will be a down day, with no plans other than going to Bible Study in the afternoon.