Sunday, August 24, 2014

Thankful Thursdays #7 - Hunt Family Pond and Garden


Welcome back, sweet Gail-Frends.  This week, we'll be visiting the pond and garden of the Hunt family on Merritt Island.  The garden has a large collection of tropical plants and trees, and focuses on plants with fruit.  (The picture above is a water barrel at the Hunt home.  I want to paint one like this.)

 This garden features a huge pond that covers 1/3 acre and is filled with koi, bream, tilapia and catfish.
Isn't this an inviting spot?
I love this fanciful dragonfly sculpture.
I imagine they enjoy some nice parties on this lovely deck that overlooks the pond.
My grandson enjoyed the fish.
They had a great, big chicken coop, but only one little, lonely chicken.
This beautiful old oak tree had a bleeding heart climbing up into its branches.

Our guide said this was the hottest pepper known to man, and warned us not to even touch it.  I think it was diablo or something like that - meaning "the devil".  

These are mangoes.  Recently, I had a "champagne mango", and they are even better than the common variety. 

Mango and avocado trees are abundant here in our area.  The avocado are the Florida variety, which are quite large.  I prefer them over the California Haas variety.  They are starting to come in now and I am so happy!


This tree was very interesting.  It called the "egg fruit" because when cooked it tasts like a cooked egg yolk.  Our guide said it makes a wonderful ice cream that tastes like eggnog.  Since it grows well here in Florida, I think I"ll put one in our yard. 

These are lychees.   Yummy fruits. 

We saw another tree that had fruit that tasted just like a strawberry, but I didn't get pictures.  By this time, my grandson was ready to go HOME.  I think he did well thought to last through seven hours of pond touring.  We were, too, because here in central Florida by 2:00 pm it gets so hot you have to go inside for some good,old AC.

This is the last stop on our pond tour.  I hope you enjoyed it.  You may also enjoy the tour from last year.  Just click on "pond tour" under the list of subjects on the left of this page.  

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11 comments:

  1. UnknownAugust 24, 2014 at 5:26 PM

    I love all of your photos. My favorite was the mango Tree (I am not sure if that is what you call it)? I have never seen how they were grown.

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    Replies
    1. Gail Griner Golden at Gail-Friends August 26, 2014 at 12:27 PM

      Hi, Jenny - thanks for the sweet comment. Yes, it is a mango. Nothing tastes as good as a good tree-ripened mango.
      Blessings,
      GiGi

      Delete
  2. a joyful noiseAugust 25, 2014 at 3:02 AM

    What a lovely tour you took us on!

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  3. stevebethereAugust 26, 2014 at 7:53 AM

    Oh it looks lovely there ;-)

    Have a pondtastic week ;-)

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  4. Rhonda AlbomAugust 26, 2014 at 8:18 AM

    Looks like a wonderful spot, very inviting.

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    Replies
    1. Gail Griner Golden at Gail-Friends August 26, 2014 at 12:29 PM

      Yes, it was lovely, and I would love to have a large pond like that.

      Delete
  5. AnonymousAugust 26, 2014 at 10:28 AM

    This looks like a very nice tour, something that we would really enjoy.
    Have Fun!!

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    Replies
    1. Gail Griner Golden at Gail-Friends August 26, 2014 at 12:31 PM

      Yes, I look forward to next year's tour. We only saw half of the ponds featured. I wish they would run it for two days so we could see them all.

      Delete
  6. Melissa HopperAugust 26, 2014 at 7:34 PM

    OH how lovely! I wish they had something like that around here.
    #wordlessWednesday

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