Demolishing History -

It's an old house dating back to the 1880's and it belonged to an historic family and has historic designation.  Yet all of that is not enough to save it from demolition.

Sadly this grand old lady of a house will be torn down to make way for . . . are you ready for this ? . . . a Racetrack gas station ! 
As I took these photos and thought of what was being lost, I found tears forming and cascading down my cheeks.  Such a loss . . . a page gone from the history of Manatee County . . . a grand house that no future child will ever see or have knowledge of.  How can nobody care ?  The truth is that Manatee County is eyeing the taxes that they'll be getting from Racetrack and our politicians feel that money trumps history any day any time !

Photos above and below show the historic information plaques and stand proudly outside of the Historic Reasoner Homestead.

 

 

The Reasoner brothers were pioneer nurserymen, started one of the first mail order plant catalogs and introduced many new plant species into the country.

 

 

The property abounds with palm trees and gigantic ancient oaks, dripping with Spanish moss.  A yard that was once immaculate is now neglected and overgrown with brush and weeds. 

 

 

I suppose these enormous old oaks will be sacrificed to make way for another concrete paved  gas station.  We already have 3 other gas stations all within half a block from this historic house.

 

 

 

 The grand old house has been boarded up and is falling into disrepair. 

 



 I always dreamt that, had I the money, I  would have purchased this beauty, restored her to her former glory and turned her into either a B & B or perhaps a tea room.  But it was only a fantasy.  The property sits within a prime commercial area and Racetrack paid 1.2 million for the property.

 

When the Grand old Lady was built she was out in the country and was the pride of Manatee county. She was Manatee's finest, largest, grandest residence.  But time plows its way through history, the city built up around the grand Lady and the present owners found they could no longer afford to pay the property taxes.  Unfortunately the county sat back and didn't lift a finger to try to preserve this bit of history. 

 

 



Good Bye old house, so long to your past and the very history that helped to make Manatee County, Florida what it is today. 

A Tree Grows in Bradenton -

Looking back.   This is a photo I posted in a previous blog post.  It is a picture of  one of our young oak trees and in the photo above, it had been recently planted.  We had almost lost this little oak because the crew that planted it had left a large hole by it's root ball.  Without soil packed around it, the root system began to dry out and the tree leaves started to turn brown and die. Fortunately we discovered the cavernous hole, filled it in with soil and watered the tree well for several weeks.

 

Photo below was also in an older blog post of mine, showing how much the same little tree had grown. 

Photos below are again of the same little oak tree, taken just a few days ago.  It has grown several feet taller and much more around.  It even had its first bird nest this year - a nest of mocking birds.  John is not at all happy with them as momma mocking bird sings lullabies to her babies at 2 or 3 in the morning.

Photo below is of the same tree, only this time it is from the house looking  back at the backyard rather than from the backyard looking towards the house.

Photo below is of a baby oak tree planted about a year ago.  It was one that grew from an acorn that a squirrel had buried in one of our flower beds.  John pulled it up and it came out with a nice long tap root so we planted it at the far back of  our yard.  It may not look very big but it is now about 6 feet tall.  Guess I should have gotten John to stand beside it when I took its picture.  Yeah, like that's going to happen, John does not like my taking pictures of him for my blog.  Come to think of it I don't really relish having my picture taken either.  Perhaps if I were more photogenic. :)

 

SWEETS FOR THE SWEET

Yes I am aware that I've already posted twice today, but those don't truly count as they were merely information regarding my past blog giveaway. This post is for all those wonderful blog readers that drop by to visit and aren't really interested in games or giveaways.

Recently my area, the area in southeast Manatee county Florida, got its very first Kohl's store along with an absolutely marvelous Fresh Market. Fresh Markets are not at all like our mega grocery stores, they're smaller and more intimate even the lighting is subdued and not glaringly brilliant.

I'm sure I could have found a dozen things in Fresh Market to photo, and buy, but I lost my heart in the candy section. Large apothecary jars filled with myriad assortments of candies. For some reason it reminded me of an old fashion store with its penny a candy jars...well these candies weren't a penny a piece but then a penny doesn't buy much of anything now a days.

As people passed by I'm sure they wondered why I was taking pictures of the candy section, well you must admit it is bright and colorful. True eye candy.

Wish I could have gotten a better shot of the produce section as all the fruits and vegetables were incredibly fresh, much like a Farmer's Market. Even the cut Christmas trees on display outside the store were the freshest and greenest I've seen in many years.

Photos below...part of the fresh produce section

More than photo worthy was The Fresh Market's unbelievable bakery. Tortes, tarts, cakes and pies looked like they were straight out of the pages of Epicurean or Gourmet magazine. Matter-of -fact, they were too perfect and too pretty, there was indeed the chance that some would have thought them not to be real. Guess I could use that as an excuse for not having photographed it, but the truth was that there were so many people standing in front of the bakery display that I could not get a shot of it. Hm, can't say as I blame them.