Sanibel Farmers Market - Captiva

The weekly Farmers Market is held on Sunday on Sanibel Island. It's a well attended and interesting Market. Most people were carrying bags of fresh produce.

The first thing that caught my eye was this Boiled Peanuts sign, a reminder of the worse peanuts we've ever eaten. I guess it's an acquired taste that neither one of us has any interest in acquiring. Of course, your mileage may differ so we left you lots!

As with most markets, there were all sorts of vendors and people everywhere you looked.

There were two or three flower vendors too.

Of course, the farmers' produce offered good deals, were beautifully staged, and I'm sure almost everything would sell.

The bane of such markets can be the 'non-growers', the people that just truck their recently bought wares into the market, having had nothing at all to do with its growing.

This is a truckload of orchids and other plants. priced at $20 for the near table. They were priced on pot size, not scarcity, quality, or any of those other fancy criteria that might require some thought or knowledge. Ok, I'll get off the soapbox now, and leave my rant for another day. Just remind me...

At one end of Sanibel island, there is a lighthouse; at the other, a bridge to Captiva. By all accounts Sanibel is expensive, Captiva is much, much more expensive. The houses are closer to being palaces. A few touristy stores, no grocery, fuel, hardware, or box store anywhere! Really!

While this next picture was not made on Captiva, it could have been. One of two lovely wood sculptures of horses. This was in someones front yard with no parking nearby, so I just did a stop, left the flashers on, and snapped quickly. Maybe next time I should dare go into the laneway, ask permission and make a decent shot. For the time being, this will have to do...

Ah yes, Captiva. We ate outside, under the red awning and had a decent meal. We had to move inside when the rains came since the awning had to be closed.

Most dog-friendly restaurants allow the dogs outside only, but under the circumstances, Cragen joined us inside.

You're probably thinking that is could not possibly have rained hard on the same day the above picture was made but it did rain, and rained hard within the hour! The rain lasted about 15 minutes or so and the sun returned about an hour or so later.

Since there is virtually no parking on Captiva, it's not much of a place to do anything other than just drive through. I haven't figured out how to get pictures of the great houses or their stunning gardens. Maybe later on during the month.

This morning, Chris and Joan left for the beach at 7 am. I slept in, but apparently, there were hundreds of shellers, harvesting the gifts that the high tide had left behind. They came back with a bundle of choice shells. Peter went off to play golf, so at about 10 am., I walked down to the beach [about a 10 minute walk].

Here's a view looking South, and you might be able to count a dozen people in the few miles to the horizon.

This is looking to the North, again, very few people. All this to say, low tide was shortly after 7:30 or so, and nobody shells on a rising tide.

Florida law forbids live shelling, i.e. harvesting shells that are still living.

Sometimes, there is some event that brings all kinds of live shells to the beach; today it was the Fighting Conch, and here's a picture of a group that will likely be saved by the rising tide. Each shell is from 2 to 3 inches long and can be pale or quite dark. We all managed to find many dead ones to collect.

The birds here are so accustomed to shellers, that they quite often just ignore you completely and let you just walk by. Here are a few Ibis with their curved beaks, digging in the surf and shore for small things to eat.

There are lots of shore birds around, including sea gulls. They seem to segregate by type when grouping to just stand on the beach and sleep. I just walked past half a dozen such groups, sometimes less than a meter away, and they didn't even move away a little bit. The ibis above were a bit more cautious with about half of them flying around me, and then continuing down the beach.

Even if the time of day was wrong, there were still lots of treasures to be found either on the beach or in the surf. All in all, about a dozen of 'keepers'.