Anna Maria Island

An Artistic July 4th Celebration

What better way to celebrate summer’s biggest holiday than with art depicting the beaches of this beautiful island.

Anna Maria Island is a picture-perfect place to spend holidays such as the July 4th weekend. It’s a wonderful family vacation spot, and therefore a great place for family reunions. Even a week before the July 4th weekend, there was an obvious increase in families on the beach. Some of them were dressed in matching outfits, such as white shirts and denim bottoms, as they posed for photos. Now, in addition to personal photos, there is a wonderful offering of island art at the Studio at Gulf and Pine, this July 4.

The three cities of the island, Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach and Anna Maria, offer plenty of traditional family fun during all holidays, including July 4. Festivals, fireworks, fishing, parades, ice cream, hot dogs and picnicking at the beach are enjoyed year-round on this wonderful island. July 4 is no exception.

Now there is one more delightful choice for the 4^th: an art reception and picnic at former Florida first lady Rhea Chiles’s Studio at Gulf and Pine. This spacious and elegant art gallery has hosted many well-attended events in the past year. From the Sun Coast Watercolor Society’s excellent show last winter to the Florida Highwaymen’s exhibit in spring, to special showings of the work of well-known locals such as architect Gene Aubry and artist Richard Thomas, the Studio has gained the attention of the local art world with its very successful shows.

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Old Florida is Disappearing at Anna Maria Island

“Old Florida” is a term people love to use when describing a place that has not been taken over by the development trends of the day. It has been a favorite way to describe Anna Maria Island for many years … both by residents and visitors who truly love the simple charms of the area. It’s also a favorite term of those whose main interest is selling the island to the public. “Old Florida ” is a great marketing slogan.

Unfortunately, even among those who think they love the Old Florida feeling of a place, it is challenging to know how to identify the details that give that feeling. And it’s even more challenging to protect them. Often the details that need to be protected do not sound very glamorous. But getting rid of things that are not glamorous is a sure way to destroy the sense of history and simplicity that are so much a part of Old Florida.

Who wants to argue that an old shack should not be torn down? Especially among those whose main priority is marketing. Who wants to argue against “beautification?” Or replacing an old bridge with a big modern bridge? Or getting rid of invasive, exotic plant species?

Those who try to help the area by scouring it for eyesores that need to be removed or fixed up may be doing more harm than good. They usually use agreed-upon standards of municipalities and counties all around the state. It’s no surprise, then, that the result is a place that looks like the rest of the state, instead of a place with its own identity.

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How to Survive Hurricane Season on Anna Maria Island

There’s more to surviving hurricane season than knowing how and when to evacuate. Even in summers without any significant hurricanes coming near the island, I have noticed that hurricanes still interfere with life, and cause stress.

We usually are very lucky to get plenty of warning about every major storm of the season. The tracking begins very early, when they still are far from Florida. Although this early warning can save lots of lives, it also wears on the nerves, as we pay attention to every single storm for days and days. There’s usually a storm somewhere, so this means we are looking at storms and worrying about the results for most of the summer. If nothing else, it is distracting and tiring.

From June through October, we tend to obsess about watching tropical updates on the local news channel and on the Weather Channel, at ten minutes before the hour. Then there are all the programs about storm disasters. It’s enough to make you nervous even if no storm comes your way.

Then, if it looks like a storm might be coming your way, life is interrupted even more. At our house, we begin to pay attention to how many bottles of water we have, and to how much canned and dried food. If the predicted cone-shaped path of the hurricane continues to include Anna Maria Island, we then start organizing our important possessions. We make sure we have enough plywood for the windows. In the years before we had a mainland evacuation destination, we also would look around for motels on the mainland, and often we’d make a reservation just in case we needed it. The problem is that it’s sometimes difficult to know, ahead of time, exactly which nights you might need that reservation. And you might not need it at all. But if you wait, the motels will be full and there is the risk of having nowhere to go.

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An Easy Plant for the Anna Maria Island Landscape

I have previously mentioned the native sea grape. Another very interesting and widespread plant on Anna Maria Island is the large crinum lily. Also called the spider lily, this large member of the amaryllis family can grow quickly to at least five feet high. The large white or burgundy ‘milk and wine’ flowers are very delicate and fragrant. When they go to seed and drop to the ground, new plants start easily, and the low-energy gardener can simply watch the garden expand, without doing any work at all. That’s my kind of gardening.

Although some instructions for how to grow crinum lilies indicates that regular watering and fertilizing are necessary, we have had them on our island property for ten years, and have only rarely given them any water or fertilizer. Crinum lilies are considered to have medium salt tolerance. Again, our experience has been better than this on our property, where the lilies are occasionally flooded when the tides are high. They may look bad for awhile, but they quickly recover.

When we first moved to the island, there were single crinum lilies here and there on our property. They looked almost too large for a small property, and we almost eliminated them. But then we decided to put them all next to each other, into a clump. The clump has continued to expand over the years, and it’s a very rewarding and beautiful part of our yard.

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Sea Grapes On Anna Maria Island Landscape

Anna Maria Island has many enchanting plants growing on it. Some are native, others are exotic. In recent years, there has been a lot of attention to trying to eliminate certain exotic plants, especially the ones considered invasive, from the Florida landscape. Although there is something to be said for this, it often seems ridiculous, when it’s in the context of locations where most landscaping consists of lawns, citrus trees, flower gardens, and plenty of pavement.

One plant that is not caught up in any controversy is the native sea grape (Coccoloba uvifera). The whimsical sea grape can be seen around Anna Maria Island in a wide range of sizes, from small shrubs, to hedges, to large trees. The most noticeable characteristic of this plant is the round leaves, which can approach ten inches across in diameter. The veins are often reddish. The shiny green leaves also turn red, and sometimes yellow, as they age.

On Anna Maria Island, this ageing often occurs at the end of winter, especially if cold temperatures stress the plant. The result is perhaps the closest thing to “autumn leaves” that occurs in the native vegetation of the island. Not only do some of the sea grape leaves turn brilliant colors as winter progresses, they eventually fall, covering the ground beneath them in the same way that autumn leaves blanket the ground up North. How nice it is to have the autumn leaves experience here on the island, even if it’s at the end of winter instead of at the beginning.

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