Hemingway Home and Museum

The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum is home to approximately 40-50 polydactyl (six-toed) cats.  Polydactyly is a congenital physical anomaly that causes the cat to be born with more than the usual number of toes on one or more of its paws. 

Hemingway was a cat lover and admired them for their spirit and independence.  The Hemingway cats as they are know as are free to roam the home and museum. They can be found sleeping anywhere around the grounds or house as the cat above stretched out on the couch in the living room.

Sometimes it looks as if they are wearing mittens because they appear to have a thumb on their paw.

Hemingway was given his first cat six-toed cat, Snowball,  from a sea captain who visited him in Key West. This fluffy white cat carried the polydactyl gene in DNA that has been passed down.

The cats are still given whimsical names of movie stars or characters or famous people just as Hemingway did such as Marilyn Monroe or Bubba.

The Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservatory

I enjoyed my visit to the The Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory strolling thru the magical world of butterflies in October.  How delightful to find that a Rusty-tipped Page, a tropical habitat butterfly, had landed on my hat. The Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory houses an impressive collection of butterflies, birds, flowers,  waterfalls, and trees.

Here's some other photos of these amazing butterflies and flowers.

Key West - Sunset Cruise

A sunset cruise is the end of another perfect day in Key West watching the sun slowly disappear beyond the horizon.  I loved seeing the fabulous views of the Key West area from the boat on the sunset cruise. A Key West sunset is incredibly beautiful yet fleeting offering the promise of another beginning of a wonderful day in paradise. 

Key West - Blue Heaven

I just had to try the KEY LIME PIE at Blue Heaven on my trip to Key West in October. The pie was topped with meringue on a graham cracker crust with freshly squeezed lime juice. Talk about yummy and heavenly!

Just look at that mile-high Meringue! Who could ask for anything more?

Harvesting First Honey

It takes honeybee workers ten million foraging trips to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey. The bees have been very busy in the new hive.

This is the first run of honey harvested from new hive.  The nectar flow wasn't enough for the older hive of bees to make honey. They uncapped the honey they had made to eat not leaving any honey for  us to harvest.