the beginning of the month

Immediately upon walking out from Kingswood condo complex this morning, a caterpillar was encountered on the sidewalk, covered with small red ants that at one point during the observation hoisted the living worm with mandibles affixed pincerlike in flesh and tried to carry the creature into the grass. Scattering the tiny ants with a fingernail, the caterpillar was rescued and carried to Possum Long Nature Center, which has a butterfly patch; along the way on SE Ocean Boulevard, other previously seen butterflies reconnoitered the walk, and the caterpillar was received upon the large blossom of a flowering plant while another butterly hovered in the air.

The stripped pelt of a small calico cat [again] was also removed from the SE Ocean roadway and left near a fence just outside the Memory Gardens entrance/exit.

Proceeding toward the U. S. Post Office from Seventh Street Nature Center entry/exitway (and its very small parking lot), three brown glass beer bottles were removed from alongside sidewalk at the intersection of Palm Beach Road and 10th Street, two with broken mouthpiece/necks, and placed in a trash container just outsie the 10th Street recreation area. Tenth Street is a designated 'Adopt-A-Street' location, with banner spread overhead just past Palm Beach Road westward.

A 'Chantal' trailer was seen to be parked outside the former Caribbean restaurant in the small plaza on the north side of Florida Street; an Armellini trailer remains parked in a neighboring lot beside the 'preventative medicine' office that has a parking lot perched at the edge of the canal.

After buying some stamps at the USPO and a brief rest on a bench at the pond nearby, the return walk to Kcc was made different with 'discovery' of a six-inch-plus heavy-metal industrial-type screw lying in the roadway of Martin Luther King Boulevard near its intersection with Colorado Street. Slightly rusting, the screw lay beside an active laundry/dry-cleaners facility until picked up and hand-carried to the Salvation Army some small distance away and across the Boulevard; it was placed on top of the premises' white-painted mailbox (and http://www.stuartfla.com/ was notified promptly!)

The other side of the pond nearby the USPO sports a metal-plaque/sign lettered 'Bruner Pond Park', where ducks, white shorebirds, a few turtles and some fish inhabit the watery pool with its fountain-spray and poolside walkways with benches. A series of other ponds are arrayed along MLKB, some with wooden docks and nearby picnic tables of the minipark sort. The new post-hurricanes police/fire station combination facility is also addressed on MLKB, very nearby Cortez Avenue where the pre-hurricanes police station once stood. Upon reaching Palm Beach Road again, the westside walk northward passes a minipark with sign lettered 'Lake Claire Park' which has back-to-back benches facing road and water, where two more brown glass beer bottles -- one intact and the other shattered -- were carried from a bushy/tree-clustered area and placed in a trash receptacle. MLKB is also a designated 'Adopt-A-Street' with a banner.

The lone bench at Hospital Park was occupied, so a walk further along Coconut Road revealed a green-painted concrete benches-and-table arrangement set back in some cool foliage at Sixth Street not far from the Possum Long Nature Center.

After a rest and return to SE Ocean Boulevard, a cigar was seen in the parking lot of the small plaza that houses a number of businesses including Raymond James Financial Services quite a way past the empty snuff can set upon the Krueger Creek Bridge walkway southside. Krueger Creek actually bulges with its waterload and is more a strait than a creek which extends from the St. Lucie River throughout the city; local mass media named it as a place to see manatees, and boats moored throughout the creek appear to function to control creature activity within the waterway. Fish are always seen in the creek; sometimes nuts and berries can be gathered from the sidewalks and tossed in for them.

And lest we all forget, a respectable white container with traditional-format black-inked label was seen set on the ground outside a hair-styling business addressed at one corner of MLKB.