What hilarity! Love the fun posts, and learning a bit about y'all in the bargain. For those who have ever read my few posts, I'm the clueless one, the transplant subset. If there's subsets of subsets, I would be the transient transplant. I spend my life following my spouse's work, geographically speaking. I pack houses, and unpack. I accumulate all manner of flower pots and containers, then downsize, give away, and move again. My gardening efforts are full of hearty enthusiasm, as well as serial plant murdering (I like to blame it on local plant ignorance and not my PJIC disease, *plants jump into the cart*). Since we never get to live in one place long enough for either the humans or the plants to put down deep roots, we transient transplants collect any and all plants fervently, via swaps, pinching starts at public malls and other venues, and the local garden center. Then, we moan and groan about disposing of our pot ghetto when the next move is announced. Transient transplants spend way too much time covering up and disguising the objectionable architectural features of our current rental digs. We creatively hang plants, put up fishing line trellises to cover up nasty window views, and annoy the neighbors with our homemade garden accessories, obtained in pre-dawn trash-day scrounging. These charming accents (yes, even the old commodes planted with petunias), feed our collector (#6) genes, which we fervently nurture upon arrival in our latest garden planting zone. We don't consciously try to be specialists (#7s), but once we latch onto a type of plant that we don't kill in the newest climate, we grow it in every color known to the species. Oh, and yes, we have even been known to dumpster-dive in #2 and #4's trash bins, where the plant pickings are amazingly healthy, lush, and green. We transient transplants have become experts at covertly watching your work through our mis-matched window coverings (read - sheets), knowing there's gonna be really good pickings in YOUR trash this week. This serves to help our garden budget go further, knowing we must fill up our pots and fronts of landlord's planting beds to overflowing in such a short period of time, before we have to frantically put it all back, to get ready for the next household moving cycle. When the next move is announced, we lovingly dig up, label, package, and mail starts of all these frantically planted pot ghettos to our Northern friends, for safekeeping until we get settled into our next digs. In actuality, our Northern plant recipients can't even remember our names, or why they are receiving these care-packages of dirt and mushy, frozen green blobs, resembling a refrigerator science experiment....

It is in St. Petersburg, down on the waterfront. It is an incredible museum. They have 96 of his works and he is the only artist shown in the museum and it is the number one attraction in St. Petersburg. The best thing about visiting there are the docents. They are incredible! They must take a test on all 96 paintings and know them all. However, on the hour-long tours, they show you maybe 20-25 of them and tell you what they know. There are lots of symbolism and double-imagery and it helps if a docent explains. So, you could take three different tours in the same day and hear completely different things each time. The paintings are fascinating and Dali was a genius. I loved every minute of it. See link below. Just by chance, we attended one of their Coffee with a Curator lectures. The lecturer was their head of security and the talk was on Art Theft. I learned SO much! Art is the third-highest stolen object after money and weapons. Dali is one of the most, if not THE most stolen artist of today. I can tell you that Dali Museum takes security very, very seriously. Carol Here is a link that might be useful: The Dali Museum

What I wouldn't have given to spend February in FL when I lived in IN. You will be pretty far south--my sister lives down there, so you will be a little warmer. We do have cold fronts come through, but they don't last more than a few days. It will seem warm to you because you'll be acclimated to the cold. As far as clothes, just bring what's comfortable. Most restaurants are very casual. There is a boat from Ft. Myers that takes you down to Key West. I think it's $90 per person, but Key West is something else! You can stay a few days or go back to Ft. Myers that evening. If you like to fish you may want to take a charter boat out. That's really fun. Or take a gambling cruise out. They usually have a buffet meal and lots of slots. LOL! Or you can just bask in the sun and relax with a Pina Colada. I hope you enjoy your time here. Please do go to the bird sanctuary Joan/MN mentioned. We saw the most beautiful sight there one evening. A tree was full of roseate spoonbills and it looked like the whole tree was covered in big pink flowers. (Take your bird book along.)

I strongly, strongly recommend Sarasota. We have more live theaters than we can count, the opera house, the ballet, a concert venue, the Sarasota orchestra, an art museum with Rubens and other notable artwork, tons of galleries, many many parks and bird sanctuaries, very fine dining that equals what you'd find in NYC, an excellent hospital, a world renowned aquarium, Marie Selby gardens, and lots of opportunities for those who like to volunteer. And while the county is red, the city is blue. Oh I almost forgot we have the beach that was voted best beach in the country. The sand is like talcum powder and even in summer is cool to the touch.