Morning with Frannie: Sun, Sargasso and Super Special Sea Beans

Yesterday started with some heavy rains leaving puddles all over Ambergris Caye.

These not-so-Roseate spoonbills were enjoying our new situation.

By afternoon the sun was BLAZING and the sargasso (which has hit our shores with a vengeance over the past week) was fragrant.

If you don’t know about the sargasso situation here in Belize and around the entire Caribbean, here’s an interesting article about the scourge.

I decided to take Frannie Banannie out for a walk.  Heading north on the road…

It smooths out considerably after about mile 8.

And we headed down to the beach.

The walking can be tough – the long grass filled with spiky burrs meets the smushy sargasso…but I found some excellent treasures.

You can see how dense the decaying sargasso is…

But the view as I walked by Tuto (you can read an earlier post about this magical property) is spectacular.  Still my favorite property on Ambergris Caye.

The rental units are looking SO cute.

To the treasure.  The saragasso brings with it all sorts of things…from dead fish to plastic trash to…drift seeds.

Here’s what I found today.  I LOVE these things.  They polish up beautifully and they get me thinking about far off places.

I’ve got my own names for them.  The sea comet is my favorite – it’s actually the starnut palm from the Amazon.  There is the sea heart and the sea hamburger.

(There are two books out there – that I need to add to my library – about this interesting seeds:  World Guide to Tropic Drift Seeds and Fruits and Sea Beans from the Tropics)

Nuts falling from trees drifting out rivers like the Mississippi or the Amazon and making their way to our shores.  Super interesting.  And super beautiful polished up and displayed in a bowl.

There are a few websites out there with photos and information – but here’s my favorite fact from this great article:

“There are 250,000 species of seed bearing, flowering plants on earth. Only about 250 of those species make drift seeds or seeds that are capable of floating on ocean currents,” explains Perry. “That’s one-tenth of one percent, it’s pretty special to be a drift seed.”

I’m not sure I qualify as a “drifter” yet, not yet ready to read thru 15 years of the Sea Drift Newsletter – but it’s a great time to collect these very cool nuts.

 

 

 

 

Posted in: