Sweet Anticipation

I picked up the St. Pete Times and one of the columnists had written these words...

.....“Florida is supposedly named for the Spanish la florida, or flower.
How pretty. How quaint. This is La-la Land.”

That is exactly how the article started.
I’m not surprised that others see....as I see....How blessed we are, in Florida and the U.S. to live in “The Land of Plenty”.
Florida is a good representation of this bountiful plenty in seafood,fresh lobster and shrimp, fruit, vegetables, fresh meats, etc.
Beautiful flowers, oleanders, poinsettias, Florida orchids etc. grow in abundance along with palm trees and others of all types.
It is true we do have....mesquites, humidity, sunburn, ’no-see-ums’ etc. as our ’tropical afflictions’ but all areas have something to contend with according to their locale. Florida is no different.
I can imagine the early Florida settler’s sense of anticipation as they tried to achieve their dreams in this bountiful state.
As we visited the Indian Key State Park, which is three-fourths of a mile from the north shore of Lower Matecumbe Key, we saw the remains of early Floridians success and failure to conquer the environment.
In 1838, Dr. Henry Perrine, a physician with a consuming interest in tropical botany, moved to Indian Key. He cultivated tropical plants and also many others as well, tea, coffee, bananas and mangos.
The island, Indian Key, is about 10 acres in size and separated from the Overseas highway by open water, visited by boat only.
Yet Indian Key and many others like it has had a colorful past which is very much a part of early Florida history.
It is known that Indians lived in the Keys for several thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish explorers.
Human survival from the bounty of the surrounding waters and land provided a ‘good life of plenty’ for the inhabitants. This was long before Ponce de Leon discovered Florida in 1513.
This ‘sheer anticipation’ is still bringing ‘foreigners’ to our mosquito infested ......Tropical Paradise.
Yep, the Indians knew a good thing on Indian Key.
They were the first to know that it was to be.....La La Land!