on strawberries and manatees

Taking advantage of our last precious days before classes and homework start up again (ok, so we both already have homework, but whatever), Ricky and I decided to fill our particularly restless day with a trip to a local produce farm!  I found a website that lists all of the places in SW Florida where you can pick your own fruit, and since it's strawberry season, we drove to one of the nearby farms to see what we could find.

Ricky was extra excited because the produce stand was selling guava jam, which is indescribably delicious, and something that we've only ever seen in Costa Rica.  We also picked up a jar of their homemade blueberry preserves (SO GOOD!). 

After perusing the stand itself, we walked back to the fields, grabbed a basket, and got to picking! 

Also, check out the sweet riding boots Ricky got me for Christmas!  It's a daring husband who picks out women's boots, that's for sure.

Between singing lines of "Strawberry Fields Forever" to each other and making sure to grab all the oddly shaped strawberries, Ricky and I had a great time. 

The first one!

"This one looks like a heart!"

Lots and lots of strawberries.

I'm pretty sure Instagram isn't cool anymore, but too bad.

Our haul!  Five pounds of strawberries for $8.55.

Our total came to $21.03, with the jam and preserves.  Definitely a cheap date, which is our favorite kind.  There's also a citrus grove nearby where you can pick five gallons of oranges/grapefruit for $9.00, so I think that'll be our next stop!  We'll probably pick a day that's not so "cold," though--it was in the mid-50's on our strawberry trip, and Ricky and I were freezing.  My ears haven't hurt so much since the time we went to Obama's inauguration, and it was seven degrees that day.  It didn't take long for our Virginia blood to thin, I guess!

We had read online about a county park that has manatees in the river (yeah Florida!), so on a whim we asked the produce stand attendant if she knew where it was.  As it turned out, it was a three-minute drive up the road, so we made a detour on the way home.

Manatee Park!  You can see the manatees in the water.

On cold days (ok, "cold"), the manatees come up the river from the Gulf because the water is warmer.  We didn't see many until we came to this little pool off the edge of the river, where the water was clearer.

Mom and baby!

Not the best view, but it was still pretty cool to see them in the wild.

Manatees and strawberries?  Yes.  Lizbeth, I'm sorry we didn't know where these things were when you came to visit, because picking strawberries would've been a lot of fun!  

In other news, I teach my first class on Tuesday.  Every time I think about it, I want to hide in a closet somewhere.  Why is this happening??  Why are they letting me do this??  Don't they know I have no earthly idea what I'm doing??

If you don't hear from me again, it probably means I died of shame, or that I ran away to a foreign country.