Paul Goldfinger ©. Thomas Edison Winter Estate. Ft.. Myers, Fla. Feb 9, 2019 Click to enlarge.
By Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor@Blogfinger.net Re-post.
Southwest Fla is where you find guys in pastel shirts, khakis, and dock-siders without socks, buying flowering plants at a garden show. He is probably from Naples.
This was the Edison Garden Festival where large crowds come to gaze at a huge variety of flowering warm-weather plants. Behind this frat guy is a very old banyan tree.
The sign says, “Watch out for falling figs.” What are the odds that I would be hit in the head by a flying fig? But anything can happen. In France a bird pooped on my hat. Those Frenchies don’t like Americans much.
Nearby are the botanical labs where Edison and his pals Ford and Goodyear worked to find plants to use to make rubber.
I was waiting for Eileen outside the gift shop when a lady carrying a plant approached me and said, “Can I pay you for this?”
I said, “Sure, but I don’t work here.”
****
Later I was about to return a cart (like the one in the photo) when a lady with a pith helmet and an official name tag approached me and asked, “What are you doing?”
I smiled and said, “I’m talking to you.”
She said, “Are you using that cart?”
I’m thinking, “No lady; jump right in.”
I said, “I’m returning this cart.”
She reached out and said, “I will return it for you.”
****
Then I went to the gravel parking lot to get something from my auto. A car stopped next to me, the window rolled down, and a pretty lady of uncertain age, smiling, said to me, “I hope you find what you are looking for.”
Really?? I was speechless and I mumbled something; then another car prompted her to move on, leaving me alone wondering, “What the hey?”
Meanwhile Eileen found this flower: It is Abutilon: Chinese lantern plant. (Do we have to call it “Asian?”)
Edison Garden Festival. Abutilon. Blogfinger.net. Eileen Goldfinger photo.
LINDA RONSTADT with a Gershwin song from her album What’s New.