It's all about the view ...

I took this photo early this morning -- just after sunrise -- from our lanai looking west/southwest.  The quality of the light shining on the mangrove swamp was just stunning with a cloudless blue sky.  The backwaters are Upper Clam Pass, with the Gulf of Mexico in the background.  The sun was not yet high enough to reflect the glorious turquoise waters so often seen down here.  As I look out the window now, the Gulf is a thousand different shades of aqua.

All the vegetation you see in this photo is mangrove swamp and part of the protected wetlands of Pelican Bay, the community we live in.  There's a wide boardwalk that snakes through the mangroves to the beach.  As I walked to the beach this morning, I recalled with some amusement that while walking through this area with a friend, she was annoyed that I pointed out the hundreds of very large, colorful spiders that cling to their webs overhead and on both sides of the boardwalk between the mangrove branches.  These grow to be as much as three inches long and have yellow bodies and black-and-white legs.  "Gee," she said, warily looking up; "Did you have to mention that?  I wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't said anything.  Now I'll never be able to walk through here again!"

Sometimes, truthfully, I'm also reluctant to look up and around while walking through.  Spiders kind of freak me out, too.  But then I might miss seeing the egrets, blue herons, storks, crabs, ibis and assorted other creatures that make this area their home.  And that would be a shame.